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CATHEDRAL DAYS 



A Tour through Southern England 



ANNA BOWMAN DODD 



JJllustratetr from Sltetctcs arCH i^Ijotograpljs 



E. ELDON DEANE 




BOSTON 

ROBERTS BROTHERS 

1887 



Copyright, 1887, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



j^afc^^ 



3InifactBitg i^rtsss : 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



A PREFACE AND A DEDICATION. 



T TNTIL one has finished a book, it is impossible 
to divine the joy which comes to an author 
with the writing of that one word " Preface." It 
stands to him as the visible sign and seal of the 
end of his labors ; it is the moment when he ex- 
periences the enjoyment of an after-dinner glow 
of satisfaction and a corresponding exuberance of 
feeling, — when he deems himself on sufficiently 
intimate terms with his readers to treat them as 
old friends, in whose ear he may whisper a word 
or two in strict confidence, under the ban of 
secrecy. 

To start forth upon a journey with three is, 
I know, always a more or less perilous undertak- 
ing. To invite whoever will, to join a company 
of travellers, proves a degree of either such har- 
dihood or inexperience as should bring the dire 
punishment of disaster to the projector of so wild 



4 A PREFACE AND A DEDICATION. 

a scheme. Yet I am emboldened to hope that 
those who follow to their close the adventures 
that befell us on our charming journey, may 
pardon the presumption of so universal an invi- 
tation, in view of the really honest desire which 
suggested the thought of enlarging our party, — 
the hope of inducing those who can and will, to 
take in sober earnest the same journey again, in 
more serious and enlightened company. 

The book, therefore, it need not be added, has 
been written with the sole purpose of benefiting 
the world. But if I only dared to be as frank with 
my readers as I already feel warmly towards them, 
I would venture to whisper in each separate ear 
that, in truth, my little volume has been written 
not so much for the world as for one, — for a 
certain gentleman who shall be nameless, yet who, 
after the publication of these pages, will not, I 
hope, be wholly unknown, and to whom I dedicate 
this book, as my tribute of affection and love. 

A. B. D. 

417 Madison Avenue, New York. 



CONTENTS. 



Chapter Page 

I. The Project . . ; 7 

II. Arundel 13 

III. Slindon and Bognor ....... 47 

IV. Chichester 68 

V. Goodwood 94 

VI. Fareham. — Waltham. — The Valley of 

THE Itchen 110 

VII. Winchester 135 

VIII. A College and an Almshouse .... 161 

IX. Hursley and Romsey Abbey 190 

X. Salisbury 214 

XI. Stonehenge. — Warminster. — Longleat. 

— Frome 247 

XII. Bath 274 

XIII. The Drive to Wells. — An Enchanted 

Night 298 

XIV. Wells, an Enchanted City 314 

XV. To Glastonbury 344 

XVI. To Exeter 366 

XVII. Farewell to Ballad 386 



ILLUSTRATIONS. 



>- Salisbury Frontispiece 

Arundel Castle 14 

. Old Parochial Church, Arundel 34 

1- Chichester Cross 74 

^ Chichester Cathedral 82 

" Old Sculptures, Chichester 90 

t- Old Houses in Close, Winchester 142 

Winchester Cathedral 144 

>- Chantries, Winchester 156 

^ St. Cross Hospital iSo 

^ RoMSEY Abbey, Transept and Nave 206 

Nuns' Door, Romsey Abbey 210 

Salisbury Cathedral, from the Cloister . 232 

^ Wells Cathedral, from the Wells 242 

Gateway to Cathedral Close, Salisbury . . 244 

Stonehenge 254 

Longleat House 262 

Old Roman Baths, Bath 292 

Bishop's Palace, Wells Cathedral ..... 332 

Wells Cathedral, from Moat 338 

Arch, Glastonbury 357 

Tithe Barn, Glastonbury 364 

Exeter Guildhall 377 

^ The Nave, Exeter Cathedral 382 



CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE PROJECT. 

/^NE night in London, in the crowded latter 
^^^ end of June, a small number of us were 
sitting under the quiet stars, in a certain friend's 
charming garden, after a long evening of pleasure. 
There had been music and talk and laughter, into 
the small hours, in the great studio, from whose 
open windows a few of us had stepped forth, at 
the bidding of our host, into the coolness and 
fragrance of the night. We sat under the trees 
near a trickling fountain, whose liquid voice at 
first was the only one which filled the sweet night 
air; but soon, through puffs of smoke, others 
joined in its babble. The talk drifted into that 
closer, more intimate form of conversation which 
midnight and summer in conjunction so often in- 
duce. It was an hour for confidences. Caught 



8 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

in this embrace €Df night, with London hushed 
and still, and only nature stirring in mysterious 
whispers, each of us in turn had been involuntarily 
betrayed into an avowal of his personal plans 
or desires. The talk, in a word, had come to 
have something of the charm and something also 
of the intimacy of ±he confessional. One had 
proclaimed his approaching nuptials ; another lier 
forthcoming book, — almost as great a venture ; 
a third had expressed his secret desire to run 
away from life and hide himself t)ehind the 
Rockies or under the shadow of the Pyramids ; 
and still a fourth confessed to his having only 
recently signed a Mephistophelian bond to do 
that very thing, to go forth into the Great Desert 
and to bring back something of its desolation 
and its grandeur in verse. 

Boston and I, having some years ago settled 
our mutual destiny, having no book in view and 
no tragic sense of unrest, could only add the 
comparatively tame and commonplace avowal of 
our modest purpose to run away from the world, 
but only so far as English lanes and by-paths. This 
announcement was the signal for a simultaneous 
attack, for an explosion of advice. If there is 



THE PROJECT. 9 

any one thing a friend thinks he^ can interfere with 
righteously, it is another man's plans, — after they 
have all been settled and made. 

" Of course you '11 coach it," briskly said the 
nearest man, in a tone as if to settle the matter. 
" Go alone ? Just two of you ! Absurd ! You '11 
die of ennui. Make up a party." 

" Only, whoever you ask, don't make it a party 
of more than six, and don't take more than two 
ladies," — this from a deeper tone amid the shad- 
ows of the "foliage. 

" You are entirely right," cried a third, under 
one of the farther palms. " I never knew more 
than six to get through a trip without trouble. One 
can get along with two women, but more — " 

Then a little laugh went round, which died into 
the trickle of the splashing fountain. Suddenly 
some one else puffed out a great volley of smoke, 
and began again. 

" And don't take luggage. Send it on by train. 
It's a wretched nuisance, always slipping about, 
and it fags the horses." 

" Why go in for England ? " broke in a new voice ; 
" it 's beastly tame. The Tyrol 's the best driving, 
and you get at least a bit of drama in your scenery, — 



10 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

peasants in costume, and all that. England has n't 
any scenery." 

" It has cathedrals," I ventured to suggest. 

" Oh ! cathedrals — well, so has France. Now, 
there's Normandy and Brittany. No one's done 
that yet on four wheels, and it 's crammed full of 
architecture." 

" Horrible waste of time, — England ! " 

Whereupon Boston assured the little company, 
that, not being an Englishman, he found it im- 
possible to agree with them ; that at least before 
condemning the country, he proposed to know 
something of its beauties and defects, and further 
courageously avowed our intention of "• doing it " 
in a much humbler fashion than from the throne- 
like elevation of a coach. And would it be best to 
hire or buy our modest little trap ? 

"Whereupon there was a chorus of disapproving 
comments. 

" Oh, you '11 have to buy, out and out." 

"Horse '11 go lame, sure to, if you have only 
one." 

" If you don't take a servant, who is to look 
out for you, — for your horse and your luggage ? 
Oh no, the thing is n't feasible. Coaching 's the 



THE PROJECT. 11 

only safe or comfortable way. Now, I know a 
man — " And the voice went on, with admirable 
zeal and kindliness, to dilate on the advantages to 
be derived from an acquaintance with this latter 
individual. 

But better even than this kindly meant zeal was 
an invitation from one of the older gentlemen to 
run down to his country-house in Kent on the com- 
ing Sunday, and talk the thing over quietly. 

The subject was canvassed to such purpose that 
we ended by putting ourselves completely in our 
wise friend's hands. He decided that we were to 
depend on local traps, taking a horse and carriage 
from one town to another. The inns all along 
our proposed route, which was to include the 
southern cathedral towns, were admirable, and 
the roads were perfect. As for scenery, while 
lacking perhaps the wider horizons and the ro- 
mantic character of the Northlands, Southern Eng- 
land was delightfully diversified along the coast by 
sea and land views, and the towns were charm- 
ingly picturesque. Altogether, our friend having 
travelled over his own country, knew it and loved 
it. He bade us God-speed with a smile prophetic 
of our coming enjoyment. We were to go by train 



12 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

from London to Arundel ; and thence, from that 
most beautiful of the Sussex towns, we were to 
start forth on our six weeks' driving-tour. 

Inside of twenty-four hours we were on our way 
to the Sussex Downs. 



ARUNDEL. 13 



CHAPTER II. 

ARUNDEL. 

A RUNDEL might be, and doubtless was, the 
most beautiful of the Sussex towns ; but as 
we had confided to each other before starting from 
London, we should only stop there long enough to 
hire a horse and trap. It would be a capital place 
from which to start. 

But Arundel itself had decided quite differently. 
It was a charming little town, — a fact of which it 
appeared to be almost humanly cognizant. Like 
all beauties, conscious of its attractions it resented 
being used for purposes of mere utility. Was 
Arundel, forsooth, with its grassy banks and its 
lovely river, its fascinating old Elizabethan streets, 
its splendid castle, and its bran-new cathedral, to 
be thus snubbed by two impertinent transatlan- 
tic travellers ? Was it to be debased to the level 
of a livery-stable ? Arundel, fortunately, was a 
thousand years older than these young American 



14 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

upstarts. She knew a trick or two. She had 
not gone on fascinating all England for centu- 
ries past, without having learned every art that 
belongs to a consummate coquette. As for these 
young Americans, she would make short work of 
them. 

And she did. First, she presented us at the 
railway-station with a huge bouquet. We could 
even have our choice of three. There were the 
masses of poppies, dyeing the meadows with their 
scarlet flames ; there were the fragrant trim hedge- 
rows, as odorous as a bride's garland; and there 
were also the low, sweet-flowering river-banks. 
These floral offerings were accompanied by a 
smile. She leaned over the hill, and shot it down 
at us over the thick-clustering roofs and chimneys, 
from the very citadel of the huge and noble castle 
itself. 

Alighting at the neat, bright little Arundel sta- 
tion was, in a word, like being dropped into the 
midst of a blooming garden. What with the odors 
and honeysuckle perfume, the dashing sparkling 
river, the town running up the steep hill to the 
castle's turreted walls, the rustic setting of the 
outlying farms, the velvety hills covered with 




1^ 



ARUNDEL. 15 

browsing sheep and brilliant-skinned cattle, an 
enchanting vision of summer and of picturesque 
beauty appeared to have stepped forth to greet us. 

"I think, perhaps, Boston, we might stop over 
one day," I remarked, as we drove through the 
streets of the town to our inn. 

" Yes ; it would be a pity to miss seeing the place, 
now we are here. There seems to be a good deal 
in it, after all," Boston replied, quite as if we had 
arranged it with our imaginations to find it inter- 
esting from the outset. 

The glimpses which we caught of the town on 
our drive up the steep High Street were of the 
fragmentary, incomplete order peculiar to such ap- 
proaches. We had a confused sense of meadows, 
of houses closely packed together, of distant vistas 
of a vast park with the downs beyond as a back- 
ground, and of the great castle's turrets, these 
latter making admirable bits in perspective along 
the crest of the hillside. 

Our experiences with the true life of the little 
town began with the entrance into our inn. 

Quite as a matter of course, we had our choice 
of two. To have only one inn in a town, and that 
one good, would make the path of the traveller too 



16 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

smooth. A rival establishment is always started, 
apparently on the principle that one's enjoyment 
in this world must be made as difficult and as com- 
plex as possible. Equally, of course, there being 
two inns, whichever one we chose it would follow 
that we would regret our choice and repentingly 
wish we had gone to the other. The Bridges Inn — 
which we had decided against, moved by the higher- 
sounding Norfolk Arms' title — presented, we found 
as we passed it, an alluring combination of charms. 
It stood in an attitude of bewitching grace on the 
river-bank, looking out upon the meadows, the cas- 
tle, and the downs through windows embowered in 
blooming vines. 

But once inside of the Norfolk Arms, we knew 
that happily our first choice had been the right 
one. The chiefest among the excellences of the 
Arms was that it stood in the very centre of 
the little town, on High Street. The neighbor- 
hood was of the most distinguished, as only a 
Frenchman knows how to say it. We discovered 
at once that the Norfolk Arms was nothing if 
not an aristocrat. In assuming the name of tlie 
famous family whose castle walls almost adjoined 
those of its ambitious namesake, the Arms had 



ARUNDEL. 17 

evidently made up its mind to maintain the family 
reputation for dignity and virtue. It announced, 
at the very outset, a high-bred indifference to or- 
nament which was too obvious to be unintentional. 
Its external austere simplicity was the protest of 
the aristocrat against the plebeian aids of pic- 
turesque accessories. A single large golden clus- 
ter of grapes hung, it is true, from the sign-board ; 
but this was the only concession to the popular 
but vulgar demand for symbolic parade. The in- 
terior of this most self-respecting inn was in 
keeping with its outward meagreness of decora- 
tive embellishment. The rooms were large and 
spacious, but not luxuriously furnished. There 
was a conscious air of respectability about the tall 
beds, the stiff upright buffets, and the erect dining- 
room^ chairs, as if to assure the inmates of these 
dignified apartments that they were in the very 
best society. 

We discovered that the epitome of the conscious 
air of aristocratic rectitude which pervaded this ad- 
mirable inn was embodied in our waiter. He was 
more than a person, — he was a personage. He 
appeared to be an individual of high-rank ante- 
cedents. From the first he gave us to understand, 



18 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

by a number of disdainful little ways, that his being 
a provincial at all was purely a matter of accident. 
This transition had evidently not been effected 
without disastrous results on his character : it had 
made him a pessimist. He took the darkest pos- 
sible views of life in general, and of the travelling 
public in particular. He appeared, from the start, 
to have taken a melancholy view of us and of our 
luggage. The compactness and limited number of 
our boxes seemed to afflict him with dim forebod- 
ings both of the transiency of our stay and of the 
limitations of our purse. At the end of the second 
day, however, we noticed that he had become more 
cheerful. 

" It must have been the dinner we ordered last 
evening," said Boston. "If a little thing lil^e that 
can raise his spirits, why, we will keep it up. But 
he is a gloomy specimen, is n't he ? " 

The gloom settled down upon him later the same 
evening. It was occasioned by a little obtuseness 
on Boston's part. Under the impulse of the knowl- 
edge that there were a number of interesting places 
about and in Arundel which must be visited in the 
next few days, and not having as yet either guide- 
book or map at hand, Boston sought to extract a 



ARUNDEL. 19 

little useful information from Walters. Boston 
was too true an American not to see in every 
other man a being born for the express purpose 
of answering questions. 

" Walters, when is the castle open ? " 

" The castle, sir, his never liopen to visitors. 
Honly the dairy and the keep, sir, hare hopen. 
The tickets can be 'ad 'ere, sir." This was deliv- 
ered with a commendable alaci'ity of utterance. 
The succeeding questions were, however, answered 
with less and less readiness. Later there came a 
perceptible deepening of the gloom under which 
Walters appeared habitually to endure existence. 
Then came a pause all at once in both questions 
and answers. During the pause Walters gave Bos- 
ton's pocket a pregnant glance. 

" Oh ! " said Boston in an undertone, his fingers 
obeying mechanically the meaning conveyed in this 
portentous look. He took out a silver coin. After 
its contact with Walters' palm the cloud of his 
melancholy appeared to lift for a few seconds. 

"What nonsense, Boston, to have tipped him! " 
I protested as he left the room. " Can't one ask 
a question in England without having to pay for 
it ? " 



20 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

" It appears not. You saw that I only did what 
was expected of me." 

" That 's because we are Americans. An Eng- 
lishman would n't have given him a penny." 

" It is Englishmen who taught him the habit, 
not Americans. Tipping is a national product. 
Every one is tipped in England, from the lord to 
the beggar. Only, when it gets into the upper 
circles it goes by another name." 

I noticed, however, that in spite of Boston's 
philosophic acceptance of this national custom, 
conversation with Walters, even of the most So- 
cratian order of dialogue, having been found to 
be expensive, became more and more feeble. 

On the following morning we saw such a spec- 
tacle in the courtyard as made us still more 
sensible that certain customs in England are tena 
ciously rooted. The cook and two assistants were 
busily handling a number of huge joints, which 
were suspended on hooks from the inner archway. 
This archway was the only mode of egress or in- 
gress from the inn-door to the street without. 
The meats were hanging in full view under the 
brick arch, as if it had been a butcher's stall 
instead of the neat approach to an inn. I can- 



ARUNDEL. 21 

not say that there was any dripping of gore, but 
there was an unpleasant suggestion of recent bleed- 
ing under the knife. 

" Tlie courtyard apparently is the inn's open-air 
ice-chest," I remarked to Boston, after our first 
start of amazement. 

" No ; it is an original and altogether inexpensive 
method of announcing the day's weww," Boston 
replied to my suggestion. Subsequent experiences 
resulted in our forming even less favorable opin- 
ions of the innkeeper's designs upon his guests. 
The next morning we noticed that the huge quarter 
of lamb had disappeared. 

" We had best order the beef to-day, or to-morrow 
we shall wish that we had." 

" It is altogether the most ingenious method 
of enforcing speedy consumption of viands that 
was ever invented. Talk of Yankee ingenuity, 
indeed ! " answered Boston, in a semi-burst of 
indignation. 

There was, in truth, no escape from the fate which 
would befall us in case of a too prolonged indiffer- 
ence to these mute but terrible appeals to our sense 
of economy. There came upon us, at the last, the 
grewsome habit of fascinated calculation, as we 



22 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

eyed the meats day after day. We could not help 
conjecturing how the dampness of one day or the 
heat of another would affect their complexions, and 
then critically surveying them to see whether their 
pink and white had suffered. 

This was not the only proof we encountered that 
the sensibility of English stomachs is of a different 
order from that of American organs. No one else 
but ourselves appeared even so much as to glance 
at the pendent carnivorous array. 

Our large sitting-room window opened directly 
on the town's main thoroughfare. One little street, 
at right angles with the larger broader High Street, 
seemed to have stepped into our windows, so close 
did its houses appear. Our sitting-room windows, 
we declared, were thus as good as a stage-box. All 
the life and the picturesqueness of the town could 
be enjoyed without stirring from the depths of our 
easy-chairs. The stage, we discovered on the second 
day of our arrival, was charmingly set. The brood- 
ing quiet had given place to lively activity. The 
streets were full of noise and bustle, of a true 
holiday clatter and buzz. It was Saturday, — mar- 
ket-day ; and from early morning carts and wag- 
ons had been standing about in the open square. 



ARUNDEL. 23 

Wagoners and teamsters were soon out shopping. 
The tiny shops in a half-hour were so full that 
they were spilling over, country-people swarming 
out into the open streets and over the narrow 
sidewalks. The charming old Elizabethan houses, 
with the rich shadows beneath their deep project- 
ing eaves, the quaint signs, the diamond-shaped 
panes, needed just this mass of rustic life moving 
beneath the window-ledges to give to this pictur- 
esque frontage this last touch of completeness. 
The street itself could hardly have happened twice, 
I think, even in England. It began its existence, as 
we discovered later, with the bridge which crosses 
the Arun. Its progress up the hillside had that 
wandering, straying irregularity peculiar to old 
streets which have grown up independent of muni- 
cipal intention. It ended, at the summit of the hill, 
with some towers and turrets which lanced their 
crenellated tops among the trees, — these towers 
and turrets being only a portion of the vast corona 
which adorned the castle's fortified walls. 

We were about to start forth on a visit to the 
castle when the sound came up to us from the 
street, through the open sitting-room window, of 
the scraping of a fiddle. A moment later, snatches 



24 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

of song b]'oke forth from a low window directly 
opposite. We stopped to listen. There was a mo- 
ment of hesitation before the song came full and 
clear ; for voices, like soldiers, must be thoroughly 
drilled to fall directly into rhythmic accord. Then 
the song burst out, firm and swelling with the 
might of the strong male voices. It was a lovely 
bit of part-singing, with sweet minor changes and 
full deep bass harmonies in it. Then, after a little, 
there were pausings and baitings. The singers ap- 
parently were at something else besides their sing- 
ing. We could see, as we leaned out, a group of 
men in the house opposite, sitting about a long 
table. They were playing cards, and there was a 
huge tankard of beer at each man's elbow. I de- 
voutly prayed that the depth of the tankard might 
prolong the length of the song ; but in a few 
minutes the song was done. The men came out, 
twenty or more in number, — strong, lusty-looking 
fellows, with the sun's red seal burnt upon their 
faces. They climbed into one of the big wagons, 
gave a deep-throated cheer to their hostess, and 
were off. The landlady stood looking after them, 
with both hands in her pockets, smiling a broad 
farewell. Then the little door swallowed her up. 



ARUNDEL. 25 

" What was that singhig over the way ? " I asked 
the chambermaid as we passed her on the stairs. 
The previous answers of this neat and most re- 
spectfid of lier sex to my questions had not im- 
pressed me with the belief that she also was infected 
with the British habit of turning a passing dialogue 
into a financial speculation. She had never failed 
to enliven her civility with a smile. 
" It's a bean feast, mum." 
" A bean feast ? And what is that ? " 
" It 's the workingmen's outings, mum, — a kind 
of harvest feast, mum." 

So rural England still played and sang a little ! 
There was a time, I know, when she sang better 
than any one else, — when she could beat the world 
in her own line. In the old madrigal days Eng- 
land was a nest of singing-birds. But I had sup- 
posed that the cruel fate which overtakes all great 
singers had come to her : I understood that she 
had lost her voice. It was pleasant to know that 
her method had been so good it had survived till 
now among its grain and bean fields, if abandoned 
by the great. 

What was not so pleasant was the braying of a 
horrible assemblao;e of instruments called a band. 



26 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

This latter was attached to a trick and monkey 
show which had taken its place, early on this holi- 
day Saturday, at the bottom of High Street. Its 
hideous blare of sound had kept the village astir 
and abroad for five long hours. Where the crowds 
came from that kept the dogs performing and the 
monkeys playing their monotonous tricks, and how 
an otherwise sane and sensible English village could 
endure having its peace and quiet disturbed by such 
a roar and din as issued from the cracked trumpet 
and the squeaky fiddle, surpassed comprehension. 
The band and its torturing music had the perva- 
siveness of all vulgarity ; it filled the village like 
an intolerable presence. We shut the windows ; 
but the discords, like jubilant furies, screamed at 
us through the key-hole. We sought refuge in the 
graveyard at the top of the street, — this at ten 
at night, when fatigue and desperation had turned 
us loose upon the world, seeking where we might 
hide our tortured ears ; but through the darkness 
of the night came the blare of that terrible trum- 
pet, like a yell of some devil cheated out of his 
prey. At eleven, finally, the last villager had seen 
the last trick, and silence fell like a great peace on 
the still air. The next morning the great hideous 



ARUNDEL. 27 

cart had disappeared. It had doubtless moved on 
to another suffering village. 

" Do you suppose it has gone to Chichester ? " I 
asked, in despair, of Boston. 

" 1 presume it has. It 's probably doing the 
towns, — it is taking its summer tour, as we are," 
was Boston's comforting answer. 

" Then I stay where I am." 

I take pleasure in warning any unwary traveller 
against a similar fate. The name of that trick 
and monkey show was Whitcomb's. Whenever he 
meets Mr. Whitcomb I advise him to take the next 
train — if it be for Hades. 

It was owing to these and other adventures with 
the more homely features of Arundel's town-life, 
that we found ourselves too late that afternoon for 
a visit to the castle. But the hour was perfect for 
an inspection of its battlemented walls. To escape 
them, in whatever direction one turned in the town, 
would have been difficult. Such a vast architectu- 
ral mass as Arundel Castle, implanted in Saxon, 
Roman, and feudal military necessities, strikes its 
roots deep and wide. The town appeared, in com- 
parison, to be but an accidental projection on the 
hillside. The walls grow out of the town as the 



28 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

trunks of a great tree shoot forth from the ground, — 
of a different growth, but an mtegral part of it. 

Topographically, Arundel has only a few features, 
yet they are fine enough to form a rich ensemble. 
Tbcre is the castle, huge, splendid, impressive, set 
like a great gray pearl on the crown of the hill. 
On one side spreads the town ; on the other, the 
tall trees of the castle park begirt its towers and 
battlements. At the foot of the hill runs the river, — 
a beautiful sinuous stream, which curves its course 
between the Down hillsides out through the plains 
to the sea. Whatever may have been the fate of 
the town in former times, held perhaps at a dis- 
tance far below in the valley, during troublous 
times when the castle must be free for the more 
serious work of assault or defence, it no longer lies 
at the foot of its great protector. In friendly confi- 
dence it seems to sit, if not within its arms, at least 
beside its knee. But in spite of these changed re- 
lations, all the good old prejudices, I fancy, are 
not done away with. In spite of certain excited 
statements from our socialistic brotherhood, the 
castle and the village are hardly as yet on visit- 
ing terms. Nothing appears easier than the fulfil- 
ment of these and other specious prophecies, away 



ARUNDEL. 29 

from the proofs. But somehow, when one looks 
up at such a vast and splendid castle as this, im- 
pregnable as its walls, and contrasts the simple 
bourgeois little town beside it, one's belief in the 
glorious principle of the equality of men dwindles 
into pitiful conjecture. One wonders whether, after 
all, the castle will not survive these and other agi- 
tations and agitators, as its very existence is proof 
of its power to resist far more formidable sieges. 

There is no escaping the conclusion that a duke, 
when one is confronted with his castle, does seem 
an awfully real being. 

The noise and the clatter of the main thorough- 
fare, and even the long stretch of the castle walls, 
we had soon passed, in our walk that afternoon, 
reaching the quiet of its upper streets. The princi- 
pal dwelling-streets of the pretty town run laterally 
across the hillside, as if for once even a village 
house-builder could prove he knew best how to 
stand when he wished to look out upon a picture. 
Beneath us, swimming in light, stretched the great 
canvas of the open country. Through doorways 
and open windows there were enchanting views 
framed in old casements and Tudor pilasters. The 
eye swept past open doorways into broad halls, with 



30 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

their quaint oM-time furniture of high-shouldered 
chairs and carved settle, straight out to the lovel7 
Sussex valley, which stretched itself out to the 
horizon like an endless carpet, with its inwrought 
pattern of waving grain, oaks, and hayricks. With 
such pictures to gain, even our best manners were 
not proof against the temptation presented by the 
tiny diamond-shaped open lattices. The houses 
seemed in conspiracy with our impertinence, some 
of them standing boldly out on the sidewalk, as if 
bent on looking up and down the street. Others 
more modest, whose deprecating air of shyness we 
respected, retreated behind with demurely drawn 
shutters, — timid creatures holding fans before 
their pretty faces. There were ancient and modern 
styles apparent, in the architectural fashions we 
passed in review, the gable-roofed Elizabethan and 
the broad low Georgian being the most noticeable. 
There were also modern reproductions of both, — 
very precise and perfect reproductions, which im- 
posed on no one. 

What pleased us even better than the houses 
was the human life that they sheltered, and which 
looked out at us through the old windows. There 
were some fresh, fair faces, that only needed ruffs 



ARUNDEL. 31 

and stomacliers to be in admirable keeping with 
the ancient architectural setting. Fine last-century 
figures, strong-featured, with gentle eyes, ceased 
their knitting to glance up, over silver-rimmed 
spectacles, at the sound of our voices. 

One face we met, which seemed strangely out of 
keeping with such surroundings. It was a curi- 
ously un-English face. It belonged to a man who 
was hurrying past us, with a book in his hand, on 
the cover of which there was a large gilt cross. 
The face was long and dark, clean-shaven, with 
deep-set wary eyes, and a sly curve on the full 
lips. It needed neither the abbe's long fluttering 
coat nor its purple lining to tell us it was the face 
of a priest. As he neared the great castle gate- 
way, I saw it open, the keeper within bowing as 
the abbd passed beyond. 

I remembered then that the castle was a great 
Catholic stronghold, the Dukes of Norfolk being 
among the few great families which have remained 
faithful, since the Conquest, to the See of Rome. 
The present Duke of Norfolk, by reason of the 
fervor of his piety, his untiring zeal and magnifi- 
cent generosity, is recognized as the head of the 
Catholic party in England. To learn that he was 



32 



CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



at present on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, and that 
such was his yearly custom, seemed to shorten 
distance for us. It made the old — its beliefs, its 
superstitions, its unquestioning ardor of faith — 
strangely new. It invested the castle, which ap- 
pealed to our consciousness as something remote 
and alien, with the reality of its relation to medi- 
aeval life and manners. 

The little cathedral which crowns the hill — the 
most prominent object for miles about, after the 
castle — is the gift of the present Duke. It is a 
pretty structure, pointed Gothic in style, con- 
scientiously reproduced witli all the aids of flying 
buttresses, niches, pinnacles, and arches. It was 
doubtless a splendid gift. Perhaps in the twenty- 
first century, when the weather has done its archi- 
tectural work on the exterior, and when the interior 
has been finely dimmed with burnt incense, when 
stained glass and sculptured effigies of saints have 
been donated by future dukes, it will be a very 
imposing edifice indeed. 

But all the beauty of ecclesiastical picturesque- 
ness lies across the way. Hidden behind the lovely 
beech-arched gateway rests the old parochial church. 
In spite of restoration the age of six ..centuries is 



ARUNDEL. 33 



written unmistakably on the massive square bell- 
tower, the thirteenth-century traceries, and the rich 
old glass. It is guarded by a high wall from the 
adjoining castle-walls, as if the castle still feared 
there were something dangerously infectious in the 
mere propinquity of such heresies. 

It has had its turn at the sieges that have beset 
the castle. From the old tower there came a 
rattling hail when Waller's artillery flashed forth 
its fire upon the Royalist garrison in the cas- 
tle. The old bells that peal out the Sunday 
chimes seem to retain something of the jubilant 
spirit of that martial time. There was a brisk 
military vigor in their clanging, suggestive of 
command rather than of entreaty, as if they were 
more at home when summoning fighters than 
worshippers. 

All is peace now. The old church sits in the 
midst of its graves, like an old patriarch sur- 
rounded by the dead whom he has survived. 

We were curious to see which church would have 
the greater number of worshippers, — how many of 
his townsfolk the Duke had managed to hold faith- 
ful to the Pope. The Ducal influence had, we 
found, prevailed over her Majesty's less ancient 



34 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

established church. At the little cathedral there 
was, we found on the first Sunday morning of our 
stay, a marked Catholic majority. But in spite of 
the more splendid ceremonial at St. Philip de Neri, 
in spite of the pomp of scarlet-robed priests and 
the glory of a double choir, in spite of the subtle 
intoxication of the incense and the pictorial attrac- 
tions of burning tapers and flower-decked altars, 
it was the simpler, the more earnest worship in 
the old church beneath the cypresses that touched 
our hearts and made us one with the worshippers. 
There was a ring in the responses, and a fervor 
in the way the hymns burst forth from the fresh, { 
strong English throats, drowning the less-meaning 
music of the birds twittering at the open door, that 
made one know and feel, with full strength of 
inherent conviction, just why it is that an English- 
man is by instinct a Protestant. His religion must 
appeal to his understanding ; it must stir his soul. 
He is not satisfied with being moved superficially. 
He is not poet enough to possess vast perspectives, 
or so delicately organized that he can vibrate to 
purely sensuous imageries. There is precision ■ 
even in the English imagination, as there are 1 
limitations to English sensibilities. 




^ 

^ 



s 

u 
o 

PS 
< 

Oh 

Q 
J 
O 



ARUNDEL. 35 

It is good to see, however, that some of tlie 
virtues which the Englishman as a Protestant has 
prayed for, have come to liim. Fresh from London 
and the site of Smithfield, it was edifying to see 
Catholics and Protestants worshipping, in gentle 
amity, within sight of one another. Is it by reason 
of the efficacy of their prayers that this grace of 
toleration has been borne in upon them, or is it 
due to the lesson which the inefficacy of their 
mutual roasting has taught them ? 

Doubtless both. The prayers made the martyrs, 
whose stuff of glorious stubbornness made sizzling 
under a slow fire appeal to the economies of the 
nation. It must have seemed, at the last, a waste 
in kindling-wood. The attempt to roast their re- 
ligion out of the martyrs was in the end, doubtless, 
discovered to be only a more expensive method 
of thoroughly baking in their beliefs. 

That all the good townsfolk of Arundel had 
not been to church on this lovely July morning 
might have been inferred from the look of the 
sky and the quality of the air, to breathe which 
was like sipping perfumed dew. 

We ourselves had proof of this backsliding. On 
Arundel Brida'e there was assembled a cono:reo;a- 



36 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

tion of open-air worshippers which would have filled 
a fairly capacious church. 

Arundel Bridge possessed an order of attraction, 
we had found, quite apart from any other feature 
of the town. It appeared to be the open-air club- 
room, the fashionable promenade, the lounging-place 
of the entire population. At whatever hour of the 
day one chanced to pass it, there was always to 
be found a knot of idlers gathered about its para- 
pet, leaning on strong elbows, looking out upon 
the river life. Even the passers-by stopped, took 
a turn at lounging, and chatted for a brief mo- 
ment ere they went their way. We also had 
fallen into this pleasant habit ; as who would not, 
with a silver river rippling beneath one, banks 
odorous and green above, the town breaking into 
charming perspectives, the great castle hanging 
overhead, and the Down hillsides rushing tumultu- 
ously into the plains ? Besides, close at hand, was 
the Bridges Inn. And we liked to be near it, and 
watch its prettiness and activity, and talk over our 
regret at not being there, much as a disappointed 
lover nurses his hurt and coquets with his despair. 

Perhaps there is more in lounging than the 
never-idle dream of. It may be that the idlers 



ARUNDEL. 37 

form the ideal leisure class, — a class too aristo- 
cratic to work for knowledge, yet to whom it 
comes by sheer force of the long measure of time 
at their command. Certain it is, that unless we 
had joined these loungers on the bridge we should 
never have known so much of the real life and 
history of the little town. We should never, for 
instance, have discovered, unless our eyes had 
proved it to us, that Arundel was a port. Yet 
such it is. The river banks are prolific with 
signs of unmistakable maritime activity. Ships 
we saw, riding in from the sea, looking indeed as 
if projected into this inland landscape for purely 
operatic purposes of stage grouping. They an- 
chored along the reedy banks, their cargoes as 
gravely unloading as if there were nothing incon- 
gruous in a full-rigged ship lying at anchor amid 
the grasses and poppies of an inland meadow. 

It is the river that pLays stage-manager. It is 
in league with the sea. Old Ocean's strong pulse 
throbs its buoyant life through this slender artery. 
At noon the river rests, barely breathing in its 
swoon of sleep. At morn and evening it rises, 
swelling with tidal fury, rushing past its banks 
with the zest of an athlete. 



38 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Wherever there is a ship, there are always any 
number of men with their hands in their pockets, 
and with no visible occupation in life except that of 
watching her. Why is it that a man never wearies 
of looking at a ship, — as he does, for instance, of 
contemplating his wife or his house or his horse ? 
Is it because a ship possesses the ideal feminine 
charm, — is never quite to be counted upon, — is 
fugitive, illusive, a creature of the winds and the 
tides, ever ready to open her white wings and to 
sail away from him ? In the eyes of the men 
who are given to watching ships and ship-life, one 
can detect a peculiar look of intentness, an air 
of alertness, as if they were perpetually on the 
lookout for the ship which will surely come in. 
It is the sea which brings with it this element 
of expectancy. It is everywhere the breeder of 
expectation and the renewer of hope, as it is the 
great mother of energy and ambition. 

On this particular morning of our half-hour's 
lounging, a little incident occurred to enliven the 
quiet and the stillness. A boat was coming up 
river with tremendous swiftness. The tide was 
flowing inward with the rush of a torrent. The 
boat with its four oarsmen was borne along on 



ARUNDEL. 39 

the wings of the wind as if it liad been a feather. 
There was no rowing, the men letting the tide do 
their work for them. Opposite the Bridges Inn 
some skilful steering was done, the boat being 
brought up in workmanlike style. For two of the 
men to clamber up the iron ladder into an open 
window of the hotel, while the other two shot the 
boat out, shoving it into the weeds along the banks, 
from which it was lifted as if it had been a thing 
of paper, and carried up the bank, was but the 
work of a few seconds. 

" They 're come to breakfast," was the knowing 
remark of my next neighbor, a stout villager of 
florid aspect, addressing no one in particular. 

From the fringe of on-lookers there was no re- 
sponse, except that the smoking went on a little 
more vigorously. After a pause another voice said : 

" They '11 be going up stream presently." 

There was again a pause, longer than the first. 
Then, " It '11 be sport to see 'um," came from a 
thin little man with a whistling voice, the whistle 
that comes through broken or absent teeth. 

Another five minutes' silence was finally broken 
by a coarser, stronger tone, with solemn accent, as 
if there were something grim in the coming fun, — 



40 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

" Yes, it will be thot." 

Silence fell again upon the little group. Each 
man's gaze sank into the flowing river, as if to 
plunge anew into the depths of his own reverie. 

" How a group of French peasants would have 
gabbled!" I said to Boston, as we strolled away 
to take a turn in the fields, determining, however, 
to return in time for the " sport." 

" Yes ; and how they w^ould have spoilt it all ! 
Their eagerness would have anticipated everything. 
Now we have something to look forward to. An 
Englishman's silence is dramatic ; it is full of 
potentialities," replied Boston, sententiously. 

When we returned in an hour, the knot of vil- 
lagers had not apparently so much as moved. No 
one stirred, or even turned his head, as we took 
our places silently, — no one, that is, except the 
thin little tanner, who readjusted his pipe to the 
end of his mouth farthest away from me, in 
the fear, probably, that smoke might be used as 
a conversational medium. 

In the river below, however, there was life and 
stir enough. The oarsmen were busy filling their 
boat with baskets of beer and luncheon. It re- 
quired great care to adjust the baskets rightly ; for 



ARUNDEL. 41 

the boat was tossing beneath them uneasily, as if 
in haste to be gone. In another moment the men 
were seated ; a turn of the oars, and they were off. 

" The bother artch, sur, — the bother artch," 
came from our neiglibors lustily enough now, and 
almost in chorus ; for the oarsmen had attempted 
to go in under the nearer one. In trying to obey 
instructions, they had struck against the stone 
abutment. 

"Your hoar, sur, — your hoar," was again shouted 
from the bridge. But the oar was gone ; and so 
Avere tliey nearly, for the strength of the stream 
was crashing them against the abutment again 
and again. 

" They hall does that, every one ; they never 
gets clear, down yonder," was the complacent com- 
ment of my neighbor. 

" Why not warn them in time ? " I asked, a 
trifle indignantly, my sympathies stirred by the 
spectacle of the struggling crew. 

" Why, mum, they likes it ; it 's what they comes 
for, to work a bit." And a laugh went down the 
fringe of on-lookers. 

Well, if they liked it, they were having enough 
of it. All the pulling like madmen was not 



42 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

helping to clear them into mid-stream. Finally, as 
all ])iilled together with the force of young giants, 
out iha boat flew, free and clear. The clever 
steering was resumed ; they shot under the arch 
like a flying bird ; there was a vision of a strong- 
young arm waving a red cap in triumph, of a tawny 
mustache bristling in the sunlight, and they were 
far off and out of sight. 

We ourselves crossed the bridge to gain the 
farther side of the river. In a few brief moments 
we were among the grain-fields and the farms. 
The object of our walk was to get a really satis- 
factory view of the castle. In our former walks 
about the town we had had numberless views of its 
walls, turret and tower studded, of bits of its huge 
fagade and its venerable keep, fitting into the 
street corners or rearing their beauty above the 
low gabled roof-tops. But in the town, through 
the medium of enclosed streets or through acci- 
dental openings between chimney-pots, there had 
been no chance of seeing the whole in perspec- 
tive, — as essential for a right viewing of such a 
vast architectural mass as Arundel Castle as it is 
wise, as a rule, to look on human greatness from 
an historical distance. 



ARUNDEL. 43 

In looking up at the castle from the river, as 
a foreground, one has a lovely breastwork of trees, 
the castle resting on the crown of the hill like 
some splendid jewel. Its grayness makes its 
strong, bold outlines appear the more distinct 
against the melting background of the faint blue 
and white English sky and the shifting sky scenery. 
In the river that morning there were brilliant 
touches of color, — reflections of the houses, the 
castle towers, and the brown and gold of the 
meadow, here and there lit up with the flame of 
the poppies lining the banks. Beyond, toward the 
sea, was the long green line of the plain, the one 
line of rest and repose in the landscape. Over all 
was the rosy, calm, virile bloom of English health. 
The bloom looked out at one through a faint 
mist, like a rosy child in the midst of its bath. 
The entire scene was suffused with that delicate, 
vague, misty veil of light, which imparts to all 
English landscape a certain aqueous quality. It 
is this moist, ethereal aspect which gives to this 
scenery its note of individuality. Earth appears 
to be a more soluble fluid than elsewhere, its 
outlines melting more easily into the ether of the 
atmosphere. 



44 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

The earliest Saxon who built his stronghold 
where the castle now stands must have had an 
eye for situation, pictorially considered, as well 
as th.at keen martial foresight which told him 
that the warrior who commanded the first hill 
from the sea, with that bastion of natural forti- 
fications behind him, the Downs, had the God of 
battle already ranged on his side. The God of 
battle has been called on, in times past, to preside 
over a number of military engageinents which 
have come off on this now peaceful hillside. 

There have been few stirring events in English 
history in which Arundel Castle has not had its 
share. As Norman barons, the Earls of Arundel 
could not do less than the other barons of their 
time, and so quarrelled with their king. When 
the Magna Charta was going about to gain sign- 
ers, these feudal Arundel gentlemen figured in 
the bill, so to speak. The fine Barons' Hall, which 
commemorates this memorable signing, in the cas- 
tle yonder, was built in honor of those remote but 
far-sighted ancestors. The Englishman, of course, 
has neither the vanity of the Frenchman nor the 
pride of the Spaniard. But for a modest people, it 
is astonishing what a number of monuments are 



ARUNDEL. 45 

built to tell the rest of the world how free England 
is. The other events which hare in turn destroyed 
or rent the castle — its siege and surrender to 
Henry I., the second siege by King Stephen, and 
later the struggle of the Cavaliers and Roundheads 
for its possession, during the absence abroad of 
the then reigning Earl — have been recorded with 
less boastful emphasis. The recent restorations, 
rebuildings, and enlargements have obliterated all 
traces of these rude shocks. It has since risen a 
hundred times more beautiful from its ruins. It 
is due to these modern renovations that the castle 
presents such a superb appearance. It has the air 
of careful preservation which distinguishes some of 
the great royal residences, — such as Windsor, for 
instance, to which it has often been compared ; 
its finish and completeness suggest the modern 
chisel. It is this aspect of completeness, as well 
as the unity of its fine architectural features, which 
makes sUch a great castle as this so impressive. 
As a feudal stronghold it can hardly fail to ap- 
peal to the imagination. As the modern palatial 
home of an English nobleman, it appeals to some- 
thing more virile, — to the sense that behind the 
mediceval walls the life of its occupants is still 



46 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

representative, is still deep and national in im- 
portance and significance. Pictorially, there is 
nothing — unless it be a great cathedral, which 
brings up quite a different order of impressions 
and sensations — that gives to the landscape such 
pictorial effect as a castle. It adds the crowning 
element of the picturesque, — that of elegance 
combined with grandeur. It also invests the land 
with the emphasis and the dignity of a purpose. 
English landscape, especially, owes much to its 
castles. The land, from its high degree of finish 
and the perfection of its detail, w^ould produce, in 
the end, the effect of a certain monotony. There 
might come the sense of tameness, of too perfect 
a prettiness. But its castles are to its dainty 
beauty what the figure of a human being is in a 
parterre of flowers. The castle is the knight, mail- 
clad and with visor drawn, standing amid the 
rose-gardens of England. It adds the crowning 
dignity of a majestic historical completeness. 



SLINDON AND BOGNOR. 47 



CHAPTER III. 



SLINDON AND BOGNOR. 



"T^HE exact distance between the giving of ad- 

-^ vice and the possibility of following it has 
never, I think, been properly measured. I presume 
one of the reasons why the experienced only ask 
counsel in order to reject it is because they have 
tested the truth of the axiom that everything goes 
by contraries in this world. 

How simple a matter, for instance, had it seemed 
to our charming friend in Kent, to say, with persua- 
sive zeal and the assurance born of inexperience, — 

" The best and easiest way is for you to depend 
on the local traps. There will thus be no respon- 
sibility, no going lame, and you will have no worn- 
out beast on your hands." 

How could a man, whose own stables were always 
full, know anything of " local traps," indeed, except 
from the optimist's point of view, regarding them 



48 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

chiefly in the light of the roadster's facile conquest, 
as vehicles both easy and pleasant to pass on the 
road ? But the driver and owner of the " local 
trap " naturally takes a much more serious attitude. 
Mankind, from his point of view, is divided into two 
classes, — the men who own horses, and those who 
don't. The latter are to be numbered among the 
dangerous elements of society. The logical infer- 
ence deduced from the theory of the inherent total 
depravity of men not owning horse-flesh is so con- 
clusive as to be irrefutable. The man who does not 
own a horse will quite naturally wish to hire one. 
He who hires, secretly hopes to steal. Every man 
therefore has in him the instincts of the horse- 
thief; hence ceaseless watchfulness is necessary 
on the part of the horse-owner. This is one of 
those cases in which it behooves every man to 
be his own vigilance committee, policeman, de- 
tective, judge, and executioner. CiA'ilization has 
done much, but in the matter of horse-thieving 
the world may be said to be still in the dark 
ages. 

Such were the conclusions forced upon us by our 
brief but vigorous attack on the hostlers and stable- 
owners of Arundel. 



SLINDON AND BOGNOR. 49 

Boston returned from two or three interviews 
with the livery-men in town with the discouraging 
announcement that none of them would trust him 
with a horse and carriage. " We never lets hout 
traps without drivers, sir," he reported as having 
been the universal but equally firm answer to his 
request for a trap without one. The unanimity of 
the response, he admitted, had alone prevented its 
wearing the front of a personal reflection. 

Here was a difficulty no one had foreseen, yet it 
■was one which threatened the very life and pleasure 
of our little trip. 

Take a driver ! Why not take the train and 
have done with it ? With a driver, how could we 
be sure of having the tamest of adventures, — of 
losing our way, for instance, or of asking it of the 
people we met along the road, and hearing, instead, 
of the crops or the voting ? Besides, the driver 
would do all the talking. He always does. (Both of 
us had secretly sworn to have a monopoly of that 
privilege.) A driver, in fact, represented everything 
from which we had fled, — the common-place, the 
conventional, the world, the flesh, and — that fiend 
called discord, that hated third in a duet of harmony. 

As we were standing confronting the owner of a 



50 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

pony and wagonette in the open square, — one who 
really gave signs of distress at not being able to 
oblige us, but who was as firm as he was apologet- 
ically civil, — an inspiration dawned on me. 

" You, of course, or your man must go as far as 
Chichester by train to bring home the carriage. 
You shall take our trunks on with you, and that 
will be sufficient guarantee that we have no inten- 
tion of running away with your horse and trap, 
will it not ? " 

The man laughingly confessed that it would. 
But before entirely committing himself, he con- 
sulted with half the town, who had come from the 
bridge to watch the proceedings. The town had 
evidently formed an estimate of our character, — 
to our advantage. 

In less than an hour the trap stood at hand 
within the inn courtyard. Our luggage, a few 
seconds later, was comfortably packed in the rum- 
ble, and we were off. The town idlers were still 
on watch, as if conscious of having vouched for our 
honesty, and not entirely willing to lose sight of us. 
In view of the distribution of a few discriminating 
shillings, they relented their watchfulness, and 
melted a little later into the adjacent side-streets. 



SLINDON AND BOGNOR. 51 

Our route lay first along the river, up into tlie 
liills at the back of the castle, then down again 
into the valley to Slindon, and thence toward the 
sea to Bognor. In all, the distance was not more 
than fifteen miles, and we had before us a perfect 
August afternoon. 

After a half-hour's drive along the charming 
little Arun's banks, we turned with reluctance into 
the cool shade and greenness of the hillside road. 
Who ever likes to leave a river ? A river in a 
landscape is its pulse, its arterial throb of life, the 
nearest approach to that ceaseless law of motion 
which informs man's own body with vitality. A 
landscape, however glorious, without a flowing 
river, always seems a bit of nature morte, — a kind 
of still-life nature, with no real life in its veins ; 
it is a headless, heartless bit of creation, with no 
stir of pulseful energy which makes it a part of the 
active living forces of the universe. When a river 
has the order of attraction which this buoyant, 
coursing, turbulent little stream of Arun possessed, 
darting like a silver flame into the Down valleys, 
or leaping with the audacity of a full-fledged river 
into the very bosom of the ocean, it is little won- 
der that we stopped again and again before we 



52 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

parted irrevocably with its changeful aspects, its 
flowery banks, its castle-crowned heights, and its 
tall hillsides. 

The instinctive reluctance with which a man 
exchanges even one delight for another, be it ever 
so lovely, argues well, I think, for the inherent 
constancy of human nature. 

After a steep climb along the crest of a long but 
beautiful hillside, from which there was an en- 
chanthig series of delightful views, we came to an 
iron gate. Our pony came to an iron stand-still. 
Neither whipping nor coaxing proved of any avail. 
She was a sturdy little beast, — a " wee brute, sur, 
but strong, strong in the legs," her owner had said 
at parting, when I had expressed a doubt as to her 
capacity for speed under the heavy load she was to 
carry. The " wee brute " was strong in something- 
else besides her legs. She evidently belonged 
among the strong-minded of her sex. That fine 
decision of character possessed by the owners of 
horse-flesh in Arundel appeared, by some occult 
means, to have been communicated to the horses 
as well. 

" Perhaps she is used to the feminine spur," 
I said, as Boston laid aside the whip in despair. I 



SLINDON AND BOGNOR. 53 

took the reins, and administered that form of en- 
couragement to the bit familiarly known as " nag- 
ging." But on this self-willed little creature this 
usually most effective method produced no more 
satisfactory result than on occasions the same 
system has when applied to the most perverse of 
men. 

" She has such an air of being right, it almost 
seems as if we must be in the wrong," I argued at 
last. " Suppose this gate does lead somewhere, — 
where we ought to be going ? " 

" The gate was not in our list of directions," 
Boston replied. 

" But since we are in search of adventures, why 
not see where it will lead us ? " And we did. It 
led us into the prettiest bit of road we had yet 
seen in Arundel. The road was through the upper, 
remoter regions of the park known as the Deer 
Park. This particular portion of the vast estate 
lay at a distance from the castle. It was a great 
open, formed of a series of short hills, covered 
with thickets and noble trees and long stretches 
of grazing-ground. Herds of deer, hundreds in 
number, stood grouped under the trees, or, startled 
by our voices, bounded over the grass. 



64 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Distant as were these glades and silent bits of 
wood from the garden loveliness of the grounds 
immediately about the castle, the impression which 
the aspect of the landscape produced was unmis- 
takably that of its being a great nobleman's park. 
There was visible none of that rank and lawless 
wildness and disorder one sees in our own great 
untrimmed, untressed fields and forests. There 
was about us the most penetrating solitude, but 
there was no touch of desolation in the loneliness. 
There could be no sadness where on every field 
and bush the evidences were so obvious of man's 
persistent efforts. Nature, in this remote and un- 
frequented region, had been carefully pencilled into 
beauty during the long centuries. The grass was 
still a lawn, although the castle was a mile or two 
away. It was, in other words, a king's possession, 
where even uninhabited and disused lands were 
kept as trim as a garden, lest by chance the mon- 
arch's eye should light upon it, and discover it en 
deshabille. 

The deer were the only unconscious, entirely nat- 
ural element about us. These delicate creatures 
preserve, even in captivity, their instinct of isola- 
tion and independence. Their solitude they con- 



SLINDON AND BOGNOR. 55 

sider is to be respected. There were hundreds of 
the slim, beautiful creatures, carrying aloft their 
coronal of branching horns, entirely at home in 
the companionship of the great trees and the 
solitude of the wind-swept Downs. 

Leaving the Duke's park was only to pass from 
one nobleman's estate to another. Our road to 
Slindon took us past a procession of great gate- 
ways and stone-built porters' lodges. Now and 
then we caught a glimpse of a Queen Anne gabled 
facade or a broad low Georgian mansion. So 
jealously does the Englishman guard his privacy, 
that we had to content ourselves for the most ^ 
part with glimpses, through the high hedge-rows, ; 
of the lawns and the flower-beds. Nature in Eng- 
land has been fashioned into a mask, behind which 
English reserve can conceal its features. When 
the convent wall was pulled down, the hedge-row 
replaced it. The latter is quite as high, and on 
the whole even more impenetrable. 

At last, however, we were up on the hills, with 
neither hedge-row nor escutcheoned gateway to bar 
Nature out. The turf beneath our feet was as soft 
as velvet. It had, we found, on trying it, — a par- 
ticularly fine and open hillside having tempted us 



56 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

to prolong the beauty of the view by walking, — 
that delightful quality of elasticity peculiar to Eng- 
lish grass. It was both soft and firm beneath the 
foot. In our faces such an air was blowing over 
the hills as only winds that pass over a hill-country 
ever yield. These Down breezes have a particu- 
larly high reputation for softness. But they were 
blowing that afternoon as if they wanted to prove 
to two aboriginal Americans accustomed to tlie 
brutality of transatlantic winds, — winds that stab 
and sting and bite, — what a really well-behaved 
English wind could do when it had a mind to show 
off its paces. It even caressed us a little, as if in 
pity for the beatings we had to take at home. 

Who is not cheered by being petted a little ? 
Under the soft, caressing touch of that tender- 
hearted summer breeze we walked on and on. The 
more we walked, the better we liked it. 

Nature is a coy creature. She is as hopeless a 
plebeian as she is difficult of approach. She insists 
on equality as the first essential of a true friend- 
ship with her. The walker, therefore, has a better 
chance than any one else of being, so to speak, 
on a footing of intimacy with her. She resents 
being looked down upon, from even so humble an 



SLINDON AND BOGNOR. 57 

eminence as the box-seat of a wagonette. For our 
pains she let us into several delightful little secrets 
that afternoon. She bade us stop and listen to the 
stillness, if one can listen to a thing Avhich is not. 
How still it was ! — so still that some sheep grazing 
two fields away made the only sound there was. 
We could hear their soft nibbling, and even the 
noiseless movement of their feet against the grass. 
A bell, a few moments later, deep-throated and 
richly sonorous, pealed out a chime or two at some 
far distance, coming up the valley from Slindon 
probably. The vibrations in the air made the dai- 
sies sway anew, — tiny bells ringing in unison. 
The tasselled tops of the oaks above our heads 
made a rustle in the air that had sometliing femi- 
nine about it. It was like the flutter of a woman's 
silken gown. 

A brisk trot of two miles or more brought the 
roofs of Slindon within sight. 

At Slindon we had been promised the spectacle 
of a model English village, with a model specimen 
of a Saxon-Norman church. 

Slindon was even better than its promise. It 
was an ideal little village. It was the most beau- 
tiful collection of thatched houses, vine-covered, 



58 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

garden-enclosed, and dimitj^-curtained, we saw any- 
where in England. The houses were so perfect, 
w^e suspected them of being on show for purely dec- 
orative purposes rather than designed for human 
habitations. 

" Slindon may be a rustic, but she is also a con- 
summate coquette," exclaimed Boston. 

The thatched houses had indeed taken on end- 
less airs of refiuemcnt and knowing ways of adorn- 
ment. The roofs were of just the right color, a 
warm gray turning to silver, — the color of all 
others to go with pink and white. The houses were 
built of brick, and then stuccoed a dazzling white. 
They had a complexion to make the eyes blink. 
But what with the rose-vines, the creepers, and the 
clematis, their white faces were as jealously guarded 
as a beauty's tender skin. Of pink there was abun- 
dance. Every tiny diamond ])ane was filled with 
roses and rose-geraniums, their petals all the pinker 
for being enclosed between spotless bits of white 
curtains. 

Each little cottage stood, besides, in the midst 
of a blooming garden, a rose within a rose. What 
with the honeysuckle, the azaleas, the great East- 
ern lilies, the rosc-vincs, and the window-pots, the 



SLINDON AND BOGNOR. 59 

air was thick and luscious with the fi-agrance and 
perfume. Nothing at once more flowery, dainty, 
softly brilliant, and yet charmingly and harmoni- 
ously rustic, could be imagined than these two 
streets running at right angles up a hillside, which 
made all there was of the perfect little village of 
Slindon. 

" If this be England, and I had been a Pilgrim 
Father, I don't think I should have troubled myself 
to move," exclaimed Boston, as he let the reins fall 
on the pony's motionless haunches. 

" I doubt if even before they moved, the Pilgrim 
Fathers had a pronounced taste for gardening." 
Then we both laughed a little ; for instinctively we 
contrasted the bleak, bold, barren New England 
farmhouse, its slovenly vegetation, and its hideous 
color, with this collection before us of ideal little 
cottages and thatched huts, all as daintily robed as 
a maiden in spring. Indeed, what did become of 
the Englishman's instinct for beauty when he trans- 
planted himself across the seas ? Was it the biting 
frost of Puritanism that killed his native taste ? 
Or is it that even in two centuries the struggle to 
subdue a great continent to his needs and necessi- 
ties has not yet given him time to set out the little 



60 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

garden in which he can take his ease ? Together 
with the taste for gardening which the Pilgi-im 
Father left behind him, we noticed other qualities 
which this little village possessed, it might have 
been wise to have exported, — its air of content, for 
one thing, thrift and a kind of mild-ejed prosperity 
seeming to look out of the window at us as we 
passed. This appearance of well-being may have 
had some indirect relation to the fact that the cat- 
tle seemed sleeker and the sheep fatter in the adja- 
cent fields than we had noticed on the uplands. 

The church we found to be less entirely satis- 
factory. It had certainly once been Saxon, and 
later on, Norman. There were two round-headed 
little windows a Norman would have scorned to 
build, and an early Norman doorway in the porch 
which the later early-English architects would have 
pronounced equally inelegant. But the entire little 
edifice wore a thoroughly modern and recently reno- 
vated appearance ; so that it was no surprise to come 
upon the disenchanting and familiar date 1866, to 
attest the fact of its nineteenth-century rebuilding. 

As we turned from the village towards the plain, 
there was a meeting of four roads. 

" Which road to the Roval Oaks ? " Boston asked. 



SLINDOX AND BOON OR. 61 

in his dilemma, of a slim rustic who was leaning 
against a gate, with his eyes glued upon us as he 
feasted his curiosity. 

" Straight ahead, sur, till yer come ter the mill, 
and then there 's sign-posts," the boy had answered, 
and readily enough ; but he remained motionless. 

" He is n't genuine. A true rustic would have 
pointed," I said. 

For his " straight ahead " left us bewildered as 
before. There were tliree " straight aheads." 
However, we plunged recklessly into the straight- 
est. We were rewarded by soon seeing the four 
great white arms of the mill waving unblushingly 
in the sunlight. Beneath them the sign-post, with 
less manners but better judgment than our rustic, 
pointed the direction of our destination. 

For several miles now our road lay through 
the plains, — fiat, fruitful lowlands towards the sea. 
There was a succession of pretty hamlets and of 
numberless detached farmhouses, but no sign of 
human life, except the farmers who were busy in 
the fields carting or pitching hay. The huge hay- 
ricks, cone-shaped and green, were the only rivals, 
in these flat fields, of the hills beyond, now hazy in 
the dimness of distance. 



62 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

We were in Bognor before we knew it. The 
jfields led us directly into rows of neat, tidy little 
houses, and clean, well-swept streets. 

A man in knickerbockers with a tennis racket, 
and a lady wearing a thin white muslin gown and 
a thick fur cape, announced to us that the season 
at Bognor had already begun. 

Other signs of its activity greeted us as we pro- 
ceeded on our way. Tennis was being played, with 
a zeal that made it appear to be a serious battle 
rather than a harmless contest about balls, in every 
square inch of green large enough to hold a court. 
The familiar London sign, " Apartments to let," 
hung above the tiny, dazzlingly clean doors of the 
little houses. The number of these signs was con- 
clusive proof that Bognor's season was not as yet 
at its height. So frequent were these modest ap- 
peals to the unlodged, as to prepare us for the 
comparative quiet we found brooding over the little 
town. 

At its best, however, Bognor could never, I think, 
have been anything but a dull little town. It was 
so decorous, so painfully clean, so oppressively self- 
conscious a prude, that dulness must have been as 
much a part of its being as were its demure little 



SLINDON AND BOG NOR. 63 

airs of conventional propriety. What has the sea 
to do with conventionality ? Its merest ripplet is 
Nature's indignant protest against too clean and 
well-swept a beach. Here there was no beach at 
all. Instead there was a brick sea-wall, which kept 
the sea at a proper offish distance. The waves 
bi'oke a hundred yards out, as an English sea 
should do when it is to serve as the tame and tepid 
bath for an Englishman's wife and children. 

The houses that fronted the water might have 
been London houses, suburban London ; there was 
no holiday air pervading them. There was noth- 
ing even of the flowery, pretty picturesqueness 
which had charmed us in some of the country inns 
and taverns we had passed along our road. These 
dull-brown and brick fa9ades were the epitome of 
British decorum. Even when off on a holiday, it 
appears that the Englishman feels he must build, 
him a prison in which he can lock himself in and 
otliers out. 

" The Englishman can't throw off his social 
straight-jacket even when he puts on his bathing- 
suit," I said in a fit of disgust to Boston. " Have 
you noticed the bath-houses ? The notices on the 
doors are little chapters of autobiography." 



64 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

" They are of a piece with all the rest," was 
Boston's answer. On the doors of several of the 
little houses were signs in large printed letters of 
" Elizabeth Primrose, aged fifty, bather from Tcign- 
mouth, where she had been bather for over thirty- 
five years." 

" Even one's bath-woman must have a pedigree ! " 
we said, and then we laughed. 

But we were the only laughers. No one else was 
gay. Holidaying at the seaside, it appears, is a 
serious amusement over here, to be enjoyed in a 
measured spirit of conscientious dulncss. Even 
the children, who with their governesses were 
gravely walking along the sea-wall, were evidently 
much too well brought up to look upon the sea 
in the light of a playfellow. Other promenade rs 
there were whose expression was familiar ; it was 
the look we had grown to know in London, in the 
Row, — that of being bored according to the most 
correct methods of a well-bred ennui. A few very 
upright young ladies were sitting, alone or in 
pairs, under huge white parasols, on the little iron 
benches. They were looking out at the sea, star- 
ing at it as if they expected, if there was to be any 
conversation, the ocean would begin it. The only 



SLINDON AND BOGNOR. 65 

talking there was, was being done bj several stately- 
old ladies in bath-chairs. They were each accom- 
panied by their upright handsome husbands, — or 
such we took them to be, from their air of indiffer- 
ence to the ladies' chatter and from their general 
appearance of command. Why is it that in Eng- 
land it is only the woman who grows old hideously ? 
These fine old gentlemen were pictures of blooming 
old age, with their pink cheeks, white hair, and 
well-knit, erect, and graceful figures. It appears 
that one must cross the Channel to find the se- 
cret which woman holds there of growing old both 
wittily and handsomely. 

It was with but little regret that we passed 
out of the long, stiff, straight little streets, no- 
ting, as we passed, the fact of how cheerfully 
many of the houses gave up half their facade to 
the great business of proclaiming their names. 
Where else except in a land of cockneys would a 
residence twelve by ten be dignified by a name, 
ostentatiously paraded, suitable only for a palatial 
dwelling ? " The Elms," the " Albert Villa," the 
" Richmond Mansion,"; — such were the pretentious 
signs painted in great flaring letters over every 
other house-door which we passed. For a modest 



66 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

people the English break out into astonishing 
vagaries of vanity. 

It was a relief to turn away from the stiff, vain 
little town into the country road once more. It 
was a flat road. But there was no monotony in 
its flatness. Arms and branchlets of the sea swept 
up into the fields and meadows, making bright 
pools of light. In the air there was a delicious 
mingling of salty vigor and sweet earthy smells, 
and it was the loveliest, tenderest hour of the day. 
The work of the day for man and beast, and for 
the sun as well, was done. All three were going 
to their evening rest. Men with rakes over their 
shoulders were following wagons so plenteously 
laden with hay that they generously left tithes 
along the roadside for stray sheep. A boy with a 
sickle over his straight young back walked near 
us, whistling a gay little air. The sickle was re- 
peated in silver in the sky, the dawning crescent 
of the young moon cleaving the eastern horizon. 
Cows in groups were moving slowly, in calm con- 
tentment with the day's bounty. Earth and sky, 
under the dying light, were changing from the 
gold of sunset to the violets and deeper purples 
of twilight ; it was the feet of coming Night press- 



SLINDON AND BOGNOR. 67 

ing out the rich wine of color from the fruitful 
land. 

But the gift of sensibility to the beauties of na- 
ture had not been given to all three of our party ; 
to our pony the charms of twilight proved no sub- 
stitute for a good supper. The Chichester Cathe- 
dral spire, which had guided us inland with its 
tapering spiral beauty, appeared to grow no nearer 
for all our frequent use of the whip. Another hour 
of whipping, of desperate spurts of energy on the 
part of the worn and weary pony, of manifold losing 
of our way amid the tortuous streets of Chichester, 
which was a far larger city than we had expected 
to find, and behold us rattling within the brick 
courtyard of " The Bird and the Swallow." 



68 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER IV. 

CHICHESTER. 

" 'T^HE Bird and the Swallow " was a wise little 
-*■ inn. It had known just where to place 
itself when there was a cathedral in town to 
be looked at. The next morning we awoke to 
encounter the charm of a surprise. Our win- 
dows, we found, opened directly on the cathedral. 
The whole of the beautiful western fa9ade rose 
in noble dignity beyond the trees in the green 
close, whose branches almost rustled against our 
windows. 

Our breakfast, that morning, promised to prolong 
itself into an indefinite feast. The mise-en-seene 
in our cosey little sitting-room was altogether per- 
fect. " The Bird and the Swallow," we confided to 
each other over the crisp toast, was to be num- 
bered among the ideal inns. That conclusion had 
been reached the night before, when a particularly 
pretty barmaid and the stout and matronly inn- 



CHICHESTER. 69 

keeper's wife had preceded us to our rooms with 
flaring candles and a pot of hot tea. 

" It'll warm ye, ma'am, and ease ye after yer long 
drive, ma'am ; but the gentleman '11 have a toddy, 
now, won't he ? — a drop of hot Scotch ? " 

Such delicate discrimination merited its just re- 
ward. Is it necessary to add that the stout landlady 
won our hearts at once ? She had been the first 
innkeeper who had really appeared glad to see us. 
The " Norfolk Arms " was much too splendid an es- 
tablishment to be moved by the coming or the going 
of travellers. Our waiter had preserved to the last 
an impassive composure and indifference, seeming 
to be fully conscious of what was expected of one 
who lived so near to the best society. But the 
Chichester inn was provincial, — uncompromisingly, 
unblushingly, avowedly provincial. The landlady 
was not above showing her pleasure at the coming 
of travellers the size of whose truuks and whose 
general air of fatigue promised a more or less 
lengthy stay in the dull season. She had bustled 
about our rooms as if she were doing the honors 
of her own house, — giving a twitch to the white 
chintz curtains, rearranging chairs to take the stiff 
look out of the room, and altogether behaving as a 



TO CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

human being should whose business in life it was 
to make travellers comfortable and to make money 
out of them. 

" I presume it will be charged in the bill, all 
this extra pains and extra cordiality, but I don't 
mind. One gets at least what one pays for ; and, 
besides, she really works for it. See how hot and 
puffy she is getting ! " 

She was purple as she tried to lift one of 
the heavy hand-bags on the rack ; but she was 
smiling as if she were enjoying it. The real 
misery would have been to be a degree less hot 
and less officious. Then we tried to picture to 
ourselves any American boarding-house keeper 
working herself into that crimson heat of active 
zeal. 

" No American woman could, you know. Either 
she would be so thin and tired, she would n't have 
muscular energy to spare, or else she would be 
above it, — above waiting on her 'guests.' She 
would ring a bell, which no one would answer, 
and it would end in your carrying your own bag. 
There is nothing like a democracy for inuring the 
upper classes into doing their own work. I prefer 
a monarchy myself, where there is somebody left 



CHICHESTER. 71 

in the class below you who is willing, for a con- 
sideration, to wait on you." 

Boston only laughed. He was too weary just 
then to reply. But I could see that the excellen- 
ces of the English system produced their effect 
when, the next morning, we descended to our sit- 
ting-room to find a snowy table laid with bits of 
old china and silver, set close to a window, through 
which the sun was shining cheerily, with the gray 
and mottled cathedral mass uplifting its greatness 
beyond the tree-tops. We finished our meal, only 
to discover, as we leaned farther out of the window 
to gain a freer view of the spire, that beyond, at 
the right of the cathedral, rose a beautiful square 
tower. It was the campanile, — the only detached 
bell-tower adjoining a cathedral now existing in 
England. It was a rugged, massive structure, as 
different as possible from the slender, graceful 
campaniles that rise into the melting Italian skies ; 
but its gray stones were full of color, and were 
peculiarly rich in shadows, which we found were 
perpetually haunting its fine octagonal crown and 
girdling its turrets. 

At the other end of the street, placed at just 
the right angle to make it a perfect pendant to 



72 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

the campanile, was another structure, — one so 
unique, so unusual, and so altogether lovely as to 
send us forth into the street that we might gain a 
nearer view. 

Was Chichester to be a series of surprises ? 
Was the little city a museum of architectural chef- 
d'ceuvresf We had expected the cathedral, but had 
been told that the town was dull. Yet here were 
three buildings, brought within the focus of our sit- 
ting-room windows, which merely to look upon would 
repay one for many miles of travel. Who are those 
ingenious ignoramuses who write the guide-books, 
whose dexterity for telling us the things we don't 
want to know about is only equalled by their 
criminal incapacity when dealing with the things 
which are really worth while ? Perhaps, however, 
we really are more deeply in the debt of these 
self-constituted misleaders than we willingly own. 
How truly dull would travel be if all travellers 
were wise ! If it be true that happiness lies more 
in acquisition than in possession, the truism must 
hold that in travel the chief charm is to be found in 
the act of discovery rather than in the enjoyment 
of the thing discovered. Ergo, a well-written guide- 
book would defeat the chief end of one's journey. 



CHICHESTER. 73 

The name of the beautiful structure we found 
on consulting the Chichester guide-book to be the 
Market Cross. There was certainly no appear- 
ance of any salable merchandise ; nor, at a first 
glance, did there seem to be any signs to mark its 
remote resemblance to a cross. It was a perfect 
octagon, whose eight-arched openings made a cir- 
cular arcade. In the centre of the little building 
was a massive pillar, from which, as branches grow 
out of a palm, the finely groined roof shot fortli its 
thick ribs. Its exterior blossomed with ornaments, 
flowering into richly decorated finials and flying 
buttresses, and budding into a wealth of cusps. 
About the whole little structure there was a de- 
lightful luxuriance and efflorescence. It had evi- 
dently bloomed into beauty at a wonderfully perfect 
moment of the later Gothic inspiration. 

The Cross being placed at the juncture of the 
four principal streets of the little city, its arcade 
formed the natural crossing for the street passen- 
gers. Beneath the vaulted roof there was a cease- 
less patter and echo of passing footsteps, of broken 
speech and laughter, — the noise of people meeting, 
talking, and parting. It was as if a huge umbrella 
had been opened, beneath which all the townsfolk 



74 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

had come to take refuge for a moment of time 
away from the dazzle of the sunshine and the 
noonday glare. 

It now serves, doubtless, as "wise and admirable 
an end, we said to each other, as the original pur- 
pose which its founder had in view. It had been 
given to the city, in the latter part of the fifteenth 
century, by one of the artist-bishops of the cathe- 
dral, to the end that it might delight his own eyes 
by its beauty and relieve the city from an extor- 
tionate tax. The poor farmers of the neighbor- 
hood were here provided with a shelter where 
they might sell their produce — their eggs, butter, 
and other articles — free from toll. 

We have changed all that in these days. The 
poor still pay toll, but we call it by a loftier 
name ; and so the Cross is a market no longer, 
but the open-air lounging-chair of every weary or 
idle soul who cares to give his leisure an airing. 

"We were neitlier weary nor willingly idle ; but 
we sat there, and still continued to sit, finding it 
too perfect a point of observation to leave. All 
the life and hubbub of the little city were about us. 
At least half a dozen streets were in full view. 
Instead of a dull city, as we looked out upon 




Chichester Cross. 



Page 74. 



CHICHESTER. 75 

its busy life, we found it uncommonly sprightly. 
There was a brisk commercial stir and life bus- 
tling up and down its streets. There were so 
many shops, one was not surprised at the multi- 
plicity of buyers. The women had the eager air 
common to the sex when there are plenty of shop- 
windows bristling with novelties. There was a 
modishness in their attire, suggestive of the sig- 
nificant conclusion that some of those tempting- 
London fashions were being worn by the happy 
buyers with a genteel consciousness of an ele- 
gance superior to the prevailing provincial styles. 
There was another cause which awakened our 
suspicions that something else besides the natural 
instinct of the sex for wearing only the latest 
conceits of fashion may have inspired the smart 
costumes with which the streets abounded. Chi- 
chester, true to its ancient Roman origin, is still a 
camp. We had passed the barracks of the regi- 
ment now quartered here, the night before. There 
were brilliant dashes of color abroad this morning, — 
brave scarlets, and jaunty red caps, the latter tilted 
at the most extraordinary angle compatible with 
adhesiveness, worn by dashing young braves, who 
walked with the step of young giants off on a stroll. 



76 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

The direct relation between a military button 
and the corresponding activity of a woman's vanity 
has never yet been satisfactorily explained. But 
we all know that the appearance of a single mili- 
tary coat has been known to change the millinery 
of an entire town from a condition of stagnation to 
one of frenzied animation. 

Besides the red coats and the pretty fresh faces, 
the streets were filled with numbers of traps and car- 
riages, many of them, from the plethoric baskets 
strapped at the back, evidently having l^een driven 
in from the surrounding country. Gentlemen from 
box-seats were giving orders to fruiterers. Stout 
ladies were handed down from drags by their foot- 
men, with an air of serious concern, to the level of 
the shop windows. One charmingly pretty girl i-ode 
up with her groom to a book-shop near us, and dis- 
mounted. She stood for a brief moment, holding 
her habit over her arm, as she looked in at tlie 
window over the titles of some new books. Her 
sweet, fine profile, her straight, firm figure, with its 
air of breeding and refinement, made a charming 
picture in the midst of the old street and among 
the motley crowd of passers-by. 

Altogether, we repeated to each other, Chi- 



CHICHESTER. 77 

Chester is a charming little town ; if this is to 
be taken as a typical English provincial town, 
the spectacle of its stirring life makes the secret 
of England's greatness the more understandable. 
Even these remote little English towns and cities, 
it appears, are centres of life and movement. 
Throughout the whole extent of this wonderful 
island there is the flow of quick arterial blood ; 
its very extremities are replete with nervous life. 
There are no stagnant places, no paralyzed mem- 
bers, in its compact little frame. London is not 
the only head or the sole heart of this admirably 
organized kingdom. The pulse and throb of active 
life thrills to its remotest finger-tips. 

From the picturesque point of view, the beauty 
of Chichester appeared to have been focussed in 
the buildings about us. The town wore a suffi- 
ciently venerable appearance to be in keeping with 
the gray and mossy fronts of the cathedral, the 
campanile, and the Cross. The houses were for 
the most part uninteresting. Commerce is as bru- 
tal as war, and defaces as wantonly as the latter 
destroys ; and Chichester was, and is, distinctively 
commercial. It has been for many generations 
the great wool-fair of the kingxlom. 



78 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

From the historical standpoint Chichester may 
be said to have had a career replete with vicissi- 
tudes. For so small a city it has amassed a good 
deal of historical experience. Its origin is, of 
course, Saxon. No English city which respects 
itself but points with pride to its heathen an- 
cestry, when its barbarous ancestors fiercely wor- 
shipped Thor and Odin. Chichester was Roman 
before it was Saxon, being one of the chief Roman 
settlements, known as Regnum. All these south- 
ern cities were for the most part Norman camps. 
They were on the high-road to the sea, and 
were the natural halting-places of the enemy or 
of the brave defenders of the soil. There is a 
temple just out of the city, at Goodwood, erected 
by the Duke of Richmond, containing a slab which 
brings Roman paganism wonderfully near. It 
bears the inscription : " The college or compan}^ of 
artificers, and they who preside over the sacred 
rites or hold office by the authority of King Cogi- 
dubnus, the legatee of Tiberius Claudius Augustus, 
in Britain, dedicated this temple to Neptune and 
Minerva, for the welfare of the Imperial Family ; 
Pudens, the son of Pudentinus, giving the ground." 
Minerva and Neptune next gave way to Thor and 



CHICHESTER. 79 

Odin ; for gods succeeded one another, as dynas- 
ties did, on these ancient battle-grounds. The 
shrine was erected by the victorious, that they 
might have a deity to pray to after they had done 
with the killing. If all the warriors turned wor- 
shippers, the temples about Chichester must always 
have been full ; for those old warriors had an ap- 
petite for blood which makes a modern soldier 
seem a very feeble production. 

When ^lle and his son Cissa took Regnum from 
the Roman Britons, they " slew all that dwelt therein, 
nor was there thenceforth one Brit left," says the 
old chronicler. When there were no others left to 
kill, they slew themselves. After a long period of 
famine, the hungry Saxons, linking themselves in 
companies of forties and fifties, sought to put an 
end to their sufferings by throwing themselves into 
the sea. What a spectacle must that wild liorde 
of undisciplined passions have been, dancing their 
fearful dance to the sea ! Even in suicide it ap- 
pears they chose to march bravely, in battalions, to 
this voluntary death. They knew not how to en- 
dure, but they still preserved their instinct of 
bravery. Christianity came at last to teach this 
brute force its own sti-cngih. 



80 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Hence the cathedral. The battle-axe was laid 
aside for the chisel. It is impossible, I think, to 
compute the tremendous influence which the build- 
ing of these great cathedrals must have exercised 
on the mediasval character. Much stress has 
been laid on the enlarging and civilizing uses of 
the Crusades. The Crusades unquestionably made 
experienced travellers of the mediaeval ascetics; 
but a cathedral was a finer experience than a cru- 
sade. It developed the humanities. It kept men 
at home, and taught them the sweet uses of sympa- 
thy, of interest in a common object, and brought 
near to them the experiences of self-sacrifice. It 
developed the yearning faculties, the longing for the 
exercise of taste and skill, into trained talents which 
could be consecrated to the highest achievement. 

What a stirring fire of enthusiasm, for instance, 
kindled the builders of the great Chartres Cathe- 
dral ! Powerful men, proud of their riches and 
accustomed to a delicate and luxurious life, har- 
nessed themselves to the shafts of carts to con- 
vey stones, lime, wood, and every necessary ma- 
terial for the construction of the sacred edifice. 
" Sometimes a thousand persons, men and women, 
are harnessed to the same cart, so heavy is the 



CHICHESTER. 81 

locid ; nevertheless such a profound silence reigns, 
that not the least whisper is heard. When they 
stop on the road, they speak only of their sins, 
which they confess with tears and prayers. Then 
the priests make them promise to stifle all hatred 
and forgive all debts. Should any one be found 
who is so hardened as to be unwilling to forgive 
his enemies and refuse to submit to the pious ex- 
hortations, he is at once unharnessed from the cart, 
and driven out of the holy band." This is quoted 
from an extremely interesting history of Notre 
Dame de Chartres, written by Abb^ Bulteau. 

No record brings to us any such account of the 
pious banding together of English nobles and 
peasants for the dual purpose of purging their 
souls by penance and hastening the completion 
of their grand cathedral. The Englishman's en- 
thusiasm is colder, even when under the influence 
of the deepest emotion. His piety is never a sen- 
sational debauch ; he is under no such dramatic 
necessity for the display of his sensibilities as 
animates the excitable Gaul, to whom the experi- 
ence of emotion is misery unless it can be enacted 
before an audience, however small. And thus, I 
fancy, the patience and self-denial and the hard-won 



82 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

triumphs over rebellious spirits and haughty souls 
lie buried in the silence of the sculptured stones, 
whose enduring beauty is the nobler record. 

As an eloquent instance of perseverance, Chi- 
chester Cathedral may be said to be unequalled. 
Its existence is proof of the indomitable energy 
of man in restoring what the elements destroy. 
Heaven itself appeared to be in league with the 
force of the winds and the fury of the flames. 
What fire did not consume, the winds wrecked. 
When the battalions of the skies had ceased their 
pillaging, the soldiers of the Commonwealth took 
possession with their swords. But in spite of 
revolutions, of wind-storms and the scorching 
breath of fire, the beautiful cathedral, with its 
lovely spire, wore a wonderfully complete and 
serine front as we walked towards it on that 
bright summer morning. It is set in the midst 
of its close, a little apart from the main thorough- 
fare. A guerdon of trees separates the brisk step 
of the passer-by from the silent footsteps, forever 
stilled, which lie beneath the old gravestones. 
Once within the iron gates, one feels the influence 
of that peculiar hush which the nearness of God's 
temple always brings. 










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CHICHESTER. 83 

Who has not felt this peace and quiet in the air 
as he has stepped aside from the bustle of the 
busy world into the still, calm burial-ground 
surrounding some old church ? It is only a dis- 
tance of a few yards, and yet how remote the 
world seems, after a few moments alone there ! 
One may be neither Christian nor believer, neither 
communicant nor worshipper ; and yet such is the 
deep tranquillity of the place, such the sweet and 
restful peace beneath those cool aisles of the over- 
shadowing trees, that imconsciously the heart be- 
comes stilled, the soul is eased of its burden, and 
life, for a brief moment's space at least, is lived 
softly, peacefully, lovingly. A blessing seems to 
be abroad in the air, and to have alighted for a 
second's space in our bosoms. 

This feeling is intensified in English church- 
yards, A beautiful fashion of appropriating a 
large space of green is one of the peculiar charms 
of English cathedral buildings. The velvety lawn 
and the grove of trees are an essential part of the 
English builder's plan, in the arrangement of his 
architectural effects. The cathedral is thus pre- 
served against accidental surroundings. It is set 
apart, away from the disturbing influences of in- 



84 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

congruous buildings. Unlike the great continental 
cathedrals, an English cathedral is neither hidden 
among the slums of an old market-place nor bar- 
barously exposed to the inclemencies of the weather 
on a barren hill-top. Sheltered amid its well- 
wooded paths, the entire mass of the beautiful 
structure rises unencumbered and unobstructed. 

Apart from the admirable advantages gained by 
such a wise combination of the beauties of nature 
and of art, there is an added charm, — the ca- 
thedral appears to have an ideal poetic isolation, 
the effect of its separateness as a temple being 
thus the more fully emphasized. 

It would have been impossible, for instance, for 
just the effect which the exterior of this cathedral 
produced on us, as we approached it, to have been 
wrought by any continental cathedral. The deep 
shade of the trees, the thick sweet grass, the quiet 
pathways, and the shadows resting on the grave- 
stones were the prelude to the deeper sensations 
the interior of the church itself was to awaken. 
We were keyed into an emotional feeling before we 
entered the temple. It is scarcely a matter of 
wonderment that men in the worst times of Anne 
and the Georges, when the most exquisite Gothic 



CHICHESTER. 85 

carvings and altar-pieces were destroyed, should 
have spared the grass and the trees. An Eng- 
lishman is a nature-lover even when he turns 
iconoclast. 

Entering the low portal, we discovered with de- 
light that we had the interior of the church to 
ourselves. Not even the flutter of a verger's gown 
was to be discerned. We could sit down unmo- 
lested on the little rush-bottomed chairs, and enjoy 
tlic beauty about us without feeling that our sensa- 
tions were to be summoned up to order. 

Our first impression was one of bewilderment. 
The interior of Chichester appeared to be three or 
four churches made one ; not because of its size, 
but because of its extraordinary architectural vari- 
ety of design. Imagine a Norman nave, so massive 
that it appears to grow out of the earth, with 
square-capped columns and round arches rearing 
their sturdy strength up into the roof beyond, tier 
on tier. This massive nave is flanked on either 
side by two slender, graceful Gothic aisles, as light 
and delicate in their lines as the branches of so 
many young trees. As if this, as an architectural 
shock, were not sufficient to have satisfied builders 
in pursuit of novelties, a walk toward the south 



86 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

transept and the Lady Chapel introduced us to the 
fantastic elaborations and rich traceries of the four- 
teenth-century workers. Beyond, out among the 
trees and grass of the cloisters, the upright per- 
pendicular lines of the still later Gothic showed 
that in this most curious and interesting little 
cathedral one could trace the growth and flower- 
ing of the English taste in architecture during 
those five hundred years when the pre-eminent 
qualities of its excellence and beauty made Eng- 
land take its place among the two or three great 
and original masters in the art. In no other 
English cathedral, perhaps, can the transition in 
styles be so distinctly traced. Chichester, con- 
sidered from this point of view, may l^e said to 
be a mosaic of English experiments in cathedral 
building. 

The result as a whole is more interesting than 
beautiful. The absence of a distinct unity of plan 
or design makes one tremendously conscious of the 
effort there has been in it all. Tlie Norman bishops 
planned one thing, which the Early English and 
later Perpendicular architects did their best either 
to obliterate or to destroy. But strength is more 
persistent than grace; and so all tlirough the 



CHICHESTER. 87 

charming geometric lace-work the rugged massive 
ribs and round-arched vertebras of the Norman 
structure protrude their giant strength. 

A certain coldness and want of color, and also 
a sense of the loss of that contrast that comes 
with prismatic light, made these effects and this 
architectural diversity even more conspicuous. 
' The whole interior was as gray as a convent. 
There was none of that beautiful, mysterious clois- 
tral twilight which pervades the atmosphere in con- 
tinental cathedrals, — an atmosphere that makes 
their dim aisles as shadowy as if enveloped in 
some delicately tinted fog. Here the pale sunlight 
brought the colorless pallor of this interior into 
almost cruel relief. The absence of glass would 
account for something of this defect, there being 
only a few modern stained-glass windows in the 
entire edifice. But even where deep shadows were 
made by some architectural feature, the contrast 
they brought to the whole was sombre. In the 
Norman triforium the shadows were black ; it was 
the blackness of the dungeon rather than the rich 
depth of blended shade. 

We did not escape the verger, after all. He dis- 
covered us just in time to prevent our making the 



88 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

complete tour of the cathedral. We had not seen 
the tombs, of course, having neglected them for 
the above less important features. But the little 
verger was a man of determination. He had had to 
deal with indifferent and rebellious tourists before. 
He soon brought us round to the correct sepulchral 
attitude ; not a mortuary urn was allowed to pass 
unnoticed. He presented us first to the bishops, 
as they lay in state, with mitre and crozier and 
archiepiscopal hat. Each had his history, of which 
only the commendable features had evidently been 
confided to the verger. One must go to Fronde's 
profane pages for the scandals which made the 
lives of some of these blameless gentlemen such a 
curious mixture of piety and immorality. Their 
frailties live on in history ; their virtues appear 
to have been infolded within their august robes of 
state. The recumbent figures of the knights in full 
armor were more to our taste ; there is some- 
thing honest in men who go to heaven armed cap- 
a-pie, as if tliey meant to fight for their rights even 
at Saint Peter's gate. By tlie side of one of these 
warriors, apparelled in tlie stiff narrow gowns of 
the fourteenth century, lay the effigy of his lady. 
The knight had taken off his glove, and held in his 



CHICHESTER. 89 

own the slim tapering fingers of his cahn-browed 
spouse. The couple are Richard Fitzalan, Earl of 
Arundel, and his Countess. The former was be- 
headed by reason of too great fidelity to the Duke 
of Gloucester, in King Richard's reign. King 
Richard was not a man to be stopped by too nice a 
feeling if he had a purpose to accomplish. After 
the Earl's interment, "it having been bruited 
around for a miracle that his head had grown 
to his body again," that thorough-going monarch 
ordered the tomb opened. Little wonder that the 
poor gentleman wanted the cold comfort of holding 
his wife's hand down through the ages, after such 
a double indignity ! 

Our verger was filled with grief over the fact 
of the loss of the fine old brass work, — the crosses 
and the shields inserted into the stone slabs. 
They had all been stolen or destroyed by the 
soldiers of the Commonwealth. The pillaging and 
desecration in this little cathedral were riotous dur- 
ing the Revolution. Sir William Waller's troops 
" ran up and down with their swords, defacing the 
monuments of the dead, and hacking the seats and 
the stalls." These Puritan warriors must have 
been connoisseurs as well as iconoclasts. They 



90 CATHEDRAL DAYS. I 

knew just what to smash and to steal. They 
stripped the cathedral as bare as only an educated 
eye could have directed. 

" Yes, ma'am, they smashed all the old glass, and 
they stole all our brasses. The jewels in the sculp- 
tures, did you notice, ma'am, they was stole, I 
fancy," was our guide's mournfully resentful sum- 
mary of those old days of pious pillaging. He 
could not have been more indignantly melancholy 
liad he held his office during tlie Puritan raid. The 
sculpture to which he referred was some most in- 
teresting old Norman work, of which we were to 
see more at Salisbury. The stolen jewels, which 
formed the eye-sockets in the faces of the rude 
figures, had left holes that looked like deep wounds. 
This early Norman sculpture is strangely like 
early Assyrian and Indian work. All archaic work 
lias a more or less close resemblance ; for it corre- 
sponds to the primitive art impulse, to the period 
of tlie beginning of a nation's art. The verger, we 
noticed, drew his finger over the stiff draperies 
lovingly, as if lie wished to smooth out some of 
their rigidity. It was when the sad-faced little 
man, however, came to the recital of the falling of 
the spire, that he touched the apogee of his dra- 























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CHICHESTER. 91 



matic capabilities. He drew us into the choir, above 
which soars the present lovely and modern spire. 
He assured us that long before any one else had 
suspected the old spire of weakness he knew that 
it was doomed. 

" Why, ma'am, the fissures was in the walls as 
big as crevices. The sides 'ere of this 'ere arch 
was as wrinkled as an old shoe. Hit was n't any 
use patchin' of such walls as that. No spire was 
goin' to set firm on them rickety legs. All the 
workmen in the country could n't make an old man 
stand straight ; and that was what these walls was, 
hold men that 'ad got tired. They couldn't 'old 
themselves hup, much less a big tall spire. Well, 
the cathedral was full of workmen who done their 
best. They was a-workin' and a-workin' ; they 
done their best, I will say, and when the storm 
came, they was like giants, — they never gave hup 
night nor day. Hit was an April storm, and every 
time the wind 'owled every man in Chichester 
trembled. There was n't a closed hi in Chichester 
that night. Why ! every one on us, men and 
boys, 'ad grown hup under that hold spire. We 
loved hit as we did our own. But it 'ad to go. 
When mornin' broke, the storm was a tempest. 



92 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

We could almost 'ear the great spire a-rockin' in the 
wind. And then it fell. We was all hout in the 
streets, bareheaded, when hit caved. Hit fell, sur, 
just like hit was a telescope, a-falling into hitself. 
Hit didn't do no harm to nobody nor nothin' but 
just hitself. Hit was just God's mercy that watched 
over hit, and when hit was gone a prayer was on 
hevery lip, and a tear in hevery hi ; and, sur, oh, 
sur, but was n't the dust awful ? It was weeks and 
weeks before we was clean and to rights." And 
the little man began furtively to dust a near choir- 
stall, as if the memory of that time had brought 
up the old habit. 

The cathedral guide-books tell the story of this 
famous falling in of the old spire in 1861 with 
more elaborateness of detail, but the old verger's 
account we found quite as accurate and far more 
picturesque. After the debris had been cleared 
away, designs for the rebuilding based on the old 
models were immediately begun. The result is 
the present beautiful structure. Many authorities 
prefer it to its famous Salisbury rival ; and indeed, 
in its aerial lightness and grace and its perfection 
of proportion, it would be difficult to conceive a 
spire more pleasing. It possesses that genuine 



CHICHESTER. 93 

soaring quality without which a spire always 
seems to miss its intended effect. It is little won- 
der that the inhabitants of Chichester loved their 
spire ; for Chichester, a flat city in a flat country, 
would be as unnoticed as featureless plainness ever 
is. This lovely arrow shot into the sky makes 
the city as conspicuous as some old veteran who, 
ere he launches his weapon, takes a fine and noble 
attitude. 



94 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER Y. 

GOODWOOD. 

'nr^HE next day an important transaction was to 
take place. We were to hire another horse. 
This ordinarily simple matter had come to assume 
serious proportions. Tlic Chichester mind we found 
even more obtuse in the recognition of honesty 
— that apparently rare virtue in rural England — 
than Arundel. The town, as one man, had re- 
fused to trust us with even so much as a she-ass 
outside its gates. Three carriages and as many 
horses had been stolen within the memory of the 
oldest inhabitant. The most credulous believer in 
mankind among the Chichester inhabitants refused 
to add a fourth to such a list. 

Clearly something must be done. We could 
hardly proceed on our tour subject to such re- 
peated suspicions of our honesty, and continue con- 
scientiously to call it a pleasure-trip. It Avould 
almost be better to elope with a horse and a 



GOODWOOD. 95 

suitable trap, and have done with honest dealing. 
I wonder if such be not the origin of half the wick- 
edness of the world ! Every one suspects every one 
else ; and sonic among us, not being able to make a 
stand against public opinion, end by becoming that 
which it is expected we in reality are. * 

We bethought ourselves, however, of a compro- 
mise with villany. A London friend had given us 
a letter to a gentleman living in Chichester ; we 
would present it in the hope that he would help 
us in our dilemma. He did better ; he solved the 
whole difficulty. 

" Why not hire a trap out and out ? You will be 
far more comfortable, and then you won't be having 
this wretched bother," he suggested. " I know an 
excellent man." 

The man, we discovered on a visit to his stables, 
had an excellent horse. Such at least we divined 
the latter to be from a rather fragmentary review of 
his hind qu;ii'ters and his glossy coat, as he stood 
quietly in his stall during our brief inspection. It 
was only when he appeared, an hour later, in the 
brave livery of a bright new harness, with fine gold 
mountings, that his adniirable thorough-bred ances- 
try, though somewhat remote, declared itself in the 



96 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

tapering legs, the small sensitive ears, the intelli- 
gent head, and the straight horizontal back. He 
was a beauty, in a word. The only doubt which a 
survey of his apparent perfections suggested was 
whether he would be quite up to his work. Could 
he carry the weight for six successive weeks of the 
pretty T-cart, brilliant in its fresh green and yellow 
varnish ; of ourselves, who were not cast in a lili- 
putian mould ; and of our luggage, consisting of two 
small trunks, two valises, and several hand-bags ? 

" No fear of that, sir. He 's up to twenty miles 
a day, week in and week out. And it's mostly 
parties we take, sir, and he never minds how many 
it is." 

If the owner didn't doubt his steed's capacity 
and endurance, why should we ? "So the bargain 
was concluded, with the reservation, however, that 
if, after reaching Winchester, we were not entirely 
pleased, we were to return the trap by train. T]iis 
would give us several days' trial of the qualities of 
our new companion. 

Happily unconscious that he was under inspec- 
tion, our new steed in the subsequent two days' 
drive made a most frank betrayal of his character. 
I am not sure, on the whole, however, that he had 



GOODWOOD. 97 

'as much character as he had nature. The poii}^, 
i'for instance, had possessed in an eminent degree 
those qualities which distinguish the former, but 
'she was lamentably deficient in the latter essential. 
'This horse, on the contrary, had more temperament 
'than character. He possessed less mind and far 
-more intelligence than his predecessor, — two qual- 
ities only too rarely seen in combination in either 
men or animals. He had too much intelligence 
and not enough mind, for instance, to oppose to 
^our own. He responded to command with the do- 
cility born of an enlightened acquiescence in the 
'right. With such high qualities he would have 
been really insufferable, if only by sheer force of 
contrast, had he not been veined with a certain 
feminine timidity ; his shying made him human 
and endurable. As this fault appeared to be a 
latent susceptibility to what may be termed the ac- 
cidentals of travel rather than an active habit, it 
could hardly be looked upon in the light of a seri- 
ous objection. He possessed one admirable quali- 
■fication we discovered, which was of inestimable 
value to us, with more than a month's driving 
'ahead: he was one of the best walkers we had 
'ever seen. His was a long, even, slightly quickened 



98 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

step, that got him over the ground in capital time, 
making him a really exhilarating companion. Al- 
together our star of luck had been in the ascen- 
dant when he joined the party. At Winchester we 
promptly proceeded to engage him by telegraph for 
the remainder of our journey. 

"• What shall we call him ? We ought to have 
asked the hostler his name. A horse without a 
name is as bad as an unchristened infant. We 
can't go on calling him plain ' horse ' for six 
weeks." 

" Why not ftall him Ballad ? That was his 
owner's name. It strikes me as an eminently 
proper one too. We 're off a-holidaying, and Bal- 
lad is suggestive ; it is suggestive of glees and 
things, of the poetry we shan't write and the songs 
we can't sing. Besides, he is a merry creature, 
and deserves a merry name." 

And so Ballad it was. Inside of a week he knew 
his new name quite as well as we. 

From Chichester we were to go early the next 
morning to Goodwood, the famous race-course 
grounds which lie within the Duke of Richmond's 
estate. Later on, towards the afternoon, we were 
to start on our re";ular route as far as Fareham, 



GOODWOOD. 99 

a little village half-way between Chichester and 
i Winchester. In all, the day's journey would in- 
clude about twenty-five miles, in which Ballad 
might show us his metal. 

Hardly two miles out of Chichester, and we were 
within the grounds of the great estate. Once with- 
in the park gates, and we were again struck with 
the fact of how the character of the land changes 
in England when it ceases to be the property of the 
people and becomes the property of one man. It is 
like exchanging the plough for the senate. Every 
great estate, no matter how vast, has an adminis- 
tered look, as if it had ceased to be vulgarly used 
ifor purely agricultural purposes and had passed 
into the aristocratic stage of being just so many an- 
cestral acres. Goodwood, for instance, which was 
enormous in extent, far larger than Arundel Park, 
had the patrician air of doing nothing in particular, 
except to be beautiful. We passed several miles 
of turf, of lawn, of grassy, clean-shaven mounds, 
I which appeared to be laid out as so many grand 
spaces whereon the great and splendid trees could 
igrow to enormous size, and whereon they could 
xast their resplendent shade. 
I " What trees they do grow in this country ! Look 



100 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

at those oaks! Don't they look as if they were 
conscious that they had a constitutional government 
and a secured law of primogeniture to grow up 
under ^" 

" Well." replied Boston, smiling, " I suppose that 
does have something to do with it. They don't look 
as nervous and shivery as some of our trees." 

" And have n't you been struck with the appear- 
ance of calculation there is about it all ? It seems 
to me as if there were a kind of destiny presiding 
over the trees in English landscape. Only just so 
many seem to be permitted to grow. Their quan- 
tity appears to be gauged by the amount of good 
they will do. So many trees, so much timber, so 
much good drainage, so many crops ; it all seems 
based on the multiplication table, a kind of moral 
multiplication table." 

" Yes, perhaps there is something moral even 
in their landscape-gardening. An Englishman 
would n't be happy, I suppose, unless he had a law 
behind him for every action, however trivial," said 
Boston, as he whipped a fly off Ballad's back, who, 
resenting the familiarity, dashed off with a spurt, 
and brought us quickly to the top of the hill over- 
looking the race-course. 



GOODWOOD. 101 

The Goodwood track is noted the world over for 
the beauty of its situation. It is on an upper table- 
land, and overlooks a lot of pretty hills which a}> 
pear to be tumbling into one another's laps. It 
might not be inaptly described, indeed, as a paradise 
of hills framed about with sky. The course itself 
is an elongated ellipse, whose curved lines dip 
slightly as they rise and fall along the slope of the 
hill-top on which the track is laid out. The sides 
and crest of the encircling hills form a natural 
amphitheatre not unlike the great theatres of old, 
where each man had an equal chance at the play 
on the stage below over his neighbor's head. It 
was easy to picture the sight of the breathless 
thousands peopling those hillsides, and to ima- 
gine the swelling chorus of their deafening cheers 
and roars, making a thundering music, as the 
sounds rolled out through the length and breadth 
of the great, roofless, unenclosed amphitheatre. 
What a spectacle to see and to have missed 
seeing ! 

" Can't we wait for them, — wait for the races ? 
They are only two weeks off," I asked Boston, as 
the prospect warmed before us. 

" And in two weeks' time we ous-ht to be in 



102 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Devon ; 3'es, we can forego Devon, and have Good- 
wood if you like." 

Is it the mission of husbands in this world to 
carry about buckets of common-sense, that they 
may always be in readiness to extinguish the follies 
of their wives ? I suppose the reason why nations 
are always so well governed who have women as 
sovereigns is because these latter are under the 
subjection of not only one man, but many. It 
is the ministers who keep their queen, by sheer 
force of numbers, from committing errors, by re- 
ducing her to the proper feminine attitude of inca- 
pacitated energy. 

Such a spectacle as Goodwood presents does cer- 
tainly suggest a lesson in the uses of sovereigns 
and ministers. One is willing to forgive a country 
its constitutional monarchies in view of such a re- 
sult as this. England, after all, is the only country 
whicli still provides splendid outdoor festivities for 
its people, which are both pure and healthy. There 
is no such democrat in his pleasure as the English- 
man. On the turf all men are equal ; all that the 
nobleman has is none too good for the peasant on 
the fete-day, when he opens his gates and bids the 
latter come in and take possession. It is true the 



GOODWOOD. 103 

nobleman doesn't go to the extreme of allowing 
the peasant to remain long. But during the re- 
mainder of the year it is the titled landlord who 
really works and plans and spends his money that 
he may keep the playground in order till the people 
come again to be his guests. On the whole, the 
English yeoman gets a great deal out of his aristo- 
cratic class. He gets a country lovelier and more 
beautiful to look upon and to Avalk about in than 
any other on the round earth ; he gets great and 
splendid belongings which supply him with a per- 
petual round of spectacular pageants and excite- 
ments ; and he gets such public pleasures as no 
other nation save the Greeks and the Romans have 
ever managed to supply to a people generation 
after generation. And now I suppose socialism 
has come to end all this. It will issue its com- 
mands ; and England, the last of the people's great 
stage-managers, must chop up its lawns into cab- 
bage-beds and harness its hunters to the plough. 

We had been walking in the meanwhile along 
the crest of the race-track, examining the Grand 
Stand and the adjoining stables, when we stumbled 
on an adventure. It met us in the shape of two 
frank, boyish blue eyes, that seemed quite as much 



104 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

surprised as we were startled at confronting them, 
as we turned the corner of one of the larger build- 
ings. The owner of these blue eyes was a slim, but 
beautifully erect boy in white flannel knickerbock- 
ers, who Avas walking about, swhiging his jersey cap 
in his hand. As he had his cap in his hand, he 
could n't lift it ; but the instinct of good manners 
was in the charming little fellow, for both cap and 
hand went up after his first start of surprise. 

He was alone, and apparently was indulging, like 
ourselves, in a survey of the surrounding buildings. 

"This is the way out, is it not?" asked Boston, 
more for the purpose of having a word with the boy 
than really because he was in need of the answer ; 
for there was something immensely taking about 
the little fellow. As we approached him, I saw 
that he had the fresh, clear English skin, the 
straightforward, honest, and brave English eyes, 
and just that touch of correctness in his bearing, 
tliat nameless moral rectitude which seems to have 
worked itself out into square shoulders and stiff 
back and firm legs, — a bearing which distinguishes 
an English-bred boy as unmistakably as the Jesuits' 
training leaves its brand on the Frcncli stripling. 

" This goes into the royal enclosure, sir," he re- 



GOODWOOD. 105 

plied without a moment's hesitation ; then he added 

■ after a moment, as we both smiled down on him : 
' " There is the Royal Stand, sir, where his Royal 
• Highness always is. Would n't you like to see it ? 
I I can take you in." And he fumbled a moment in 
' his deep pockets, out of which came a knife, a small 

■ apple, a bunch of raisins, a quarry of marbles, and 
one large key. He blushed now for the first time ; 
it must have been at the raisins, which presumably 
he was surprised and a little annoyed to find still 
uneaten. They were quickly slipped into the other 
pocket. Then he opened the door of the stand, 
and ran up the steps to the corner of the huge 
building. He appeared to be entirely at home in 
the great empty building. He led us to the south- 
ern corner, which was partitioned off from the rest 
of the house and was enclosed in glass. It was 
like a great proscenium-box overlooking the stage 
setting. The prospect was glorious ; all the lovely 
hills lying in full view, with wide horizons beyond. 
At this elevation the whole track lay beneath us 
in all its length and breadth. There was also the 
entire sweep of the grounds to be taken in at a 
glance. At one side, the side nearest the gate en- 
trance, was a lovely bit of shade, — a velvet carpet 



106 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

of the greenest turf, with noble trees at near 
distances. 

"That's the Lady's Lawn, ma'am, where the 
luncheons are spread," said our charming little 
companion, as he saw we were looking down into 
the coolness and the green. " The ladies sit down 
there or walk about. Sometimes her Royal High- 
ness goes down. Then over there, over yonder, is 
Avhere the coaches and drags stand, and over still 
farther is the place for the carriages and for the 
carts. Have you ever seen the horses run, sir ? " 

" No, my lad, I never have here ; but you have, I 
presume?" It was delightful to see the boy's eyes 
flame out, and his red cheeks grow redder yet, as 
he answered quickly, — 

" Oh dear, yes, sir, over and over again. Last 
year I lost, but this year I shall win. I've bet on 
the favorite," — with tremendous earnestness. 

He continued to do the honors of the place as 
if he felt the pressure of the true host's instinct of 
hospitality. 

" Did you notice the road on the left - as you 
came up, the road that goes through the woods ? 
That 's the road the Royal Party take to come here 
on race-day. The other roads are free ; but that 



GOODWOOD. 107 

one is reserved for the Duke and the Royal party. 
And did you see tlie wood, sir, the birdless wood ? 
It was on the right near the top of the long hill. 
No birds are ever found there, and they die if tliey 
build their nests there. Did you notice how still 
it was? It's nearly a mile long. I don't like 
it, it's too still; it's like Sunday. I always ran 
past as fast as I can, and the deer always run 
through it too. Did you see tiie deer? There! 
there go some now over there, — and there's my 
mamma. I must go now, please, sir. Good-day, 
ma'am." 

He shook liands with us both, taking plenty of 
time for his pretty boyish civilities, and then he 
was off like a shot. He joined a lady who was 
standing on the lawn, and who appeared to be 
scarcliing for some one. 

We passed them both a few moments later, as 
we drove down the road on our way out. The lady 
was holding the boy by the hand, and he was talk- 
ing away as hard as he could, looking up at lier 
with swift glances, and dancing along as boys 
do when they are talking about what interests 
them. The two made a pretty picture, walking 
along the smooth white road under the great dark 



108 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

trees, the lady's muslin gown fluttering in her 
grasp as she held above her head a white muslin 
sunshade. She was bareheaded, and the sunlight 
caught every once in a while in among the blond 
braids and beat a tress into gold. She had a noble 
carriage, and walked, as all Englishwomen of the 
upper class do, with the dignity and flexibility of 
women who, even when they sit or stand, seem 
to be still in the saddle. The lady's bearing has 
something soldierly in it, with an added grace and 
elegance, however, that no soldier can ever hope to 
possess. 

As we drove past, they both looked up. The boy 
smiled, and his Jersey cap was waved at us as if 
we had been old friends. The lady smiled too, and 
bowed very prettily, the pink in her clear cheek 
flushing a shade deeper. 

" For a countess she has uncommonly good man- 
ners, and so has her son. On the whole, I approve 
of the aristocracy." 

" How do you know she is a countess ? She 
may be a housekeeper or — " 

" Are n't you ashamed ? When she was so pretty, 
too ! Well, she was a lady, whoever or whatever 
she was, and I 'm glad she came out this lovely 



GOODWOOD. 109 

morning to add one more picture to it all. How 
her grace and refinement fitted into this delicate 
background ! " 

"Yes, I'll admit that an Englishwoman crossing 
an English lawn is about as complete an ensemble 
as one can hope to find anywhere on this round 
earth ; and she ivas pretty," admitted Boston. 

The memory of her refinement and beauty went 
with us into the dust and heat of the highway on 
our road towards Chichester. It conies up to me 
now, as I write of her, with vivid keenness and 
revived pleasure. I hope she still sometimes walks 
about bareheaded, on summer mornings, with a 
muslin sunshade over her head and that smile 
on her sweet face. 



110 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER VL 

FAEEHAM. — AYALTHAM. — THE VALLEY OF THE 
ITCHEN. 

/'^UR drive to Farcham was, after all, postponed 
^^ until the next afternoon. There was just 
enough drizzle and mist, which came from no one 
knew where, to make the prospect unpromising-. 
It was no part of our plan to wait for an English 
sky to make up its mind to stop raining ; but wo 
thought we might arrange it with the baroi..ci:er, 
if it were in even a moderately accommodating 
mood, not to force us to start out on our day's 
drive in the rain. 

The following afternoon, to repay us, the sun 
came out in really radiant glorj^ for an English 
sun. Sometimes it seems as if England were a 
little misty universe all to itself, as if the skies 
were so full of teary stars, and the weeping moon 
and the sun were so consumed by some hidden 
gi-ief, that they had neither the strength nor the 
courage to shine as they do elsewhere. On this 



» FARE HAM. Ill 

particular Wednesday the sun had concluded, ap- 
{ parcntly, to forget its particular sorrow and to 
sliine as if it were off a-holidaying, like ourselves. 
Its brightness and radiance made our roadway 
brilliant in beauty. The golden light was every- 
where : it was in the air, woven like a tissue in 
among the trees ; it sparkled in diamond showers on 
the roof-tops, and turned, with its Midas touch, even 
the wayside stalks into " weeds of glorious feature." 
We w^ere still in the flat country of the plains ; a 
few miles away from Chichester, however, glimpses 
of the sea became more and more frequent. A con- 
tiimous chain of villages, hamlets, and farm-houses 
skirted this coast of the sea, and followed us as 
we turned inland. It was the most thickly popu- 
lated region we had as yet seen. Most of the 
villages we passed were separated by a few farm- 
lands only ; as we clattered out of the cobble-paved 
streets of one, we could see the roofs of the next, 
just beyond, thickening behind the trees. Tliis 
procession of villages gave us a vivid sense of the 
fact that so small an island as England should yet 
have a population of fifteen millions ; the fifteen 
millions live .under their English sky as others 
live under the roof of a house, in adjoining rooms. 



112 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

The houses, even here in the open country, appeared 
ahnost to touch one another. 

The villagers bore a striking resemblance to 
one another. Their only distinctive difference ap- 
peared to be a discriminating taste in dirt. All 
■were dirty, — houses, streets, children, and shops. 
Some Avcre superlatively and others only compara- 
tively filthy. The absence of gentlemen's seats 
in this neighborhood doubtless accounted for the 
slovenly appearance of these otherwise somewhat 
pretty hamlets and villages. 

Wealth refines as much as it tends to mitigate 
the miseries of the lower classes. The human 
animal is an imitative creature. A tradesman 
learns to bow when he has a gentleman to deal 
with; but he is as unmannerly as the rest of 
the village if he has only villagers as customers. 
All the little shops looked mean, and all the shop- 
keepers frowsy and slatternly, as we passed them 
swiftly, as if the latter had no ambition in life 
which made neatly brushed hair and a clean shirt 
seem worth while. 

There was a blot on the landscape that was 
neither these dirty villages nor the frowsy villagers; 
the blot was the number of tramps we kept meeting. 



FAREHAM. 113 

I Every half-mile or so, there were two or three of 
these poor and wretched-looking wayfarers. They 

I toiled, in pairs or in groups of four and five, along 
the dusty highway, dragging their rags after 

I them in an aimless, hopeless, despairing kind 
of way. Who does not know the tramp's gait, 

■ and his uncertain, shiftless, going-nowhere-in-par- 
ticular air ? The manner in which he wearily lifts 

' one foot as the other falls, tells his story. He 

■ is society's outcast, and wears the fetters of his 
own degradation. The English tramp adds vicious- 

' ness to his despair. Most of these men whom 

1 we met wore a dangerous, sullen growl on their 

I sodden and bloated features. Their capacity for 

' villariy had a ripened expression, we noticed, which 

1 had stamped itself like a brand of infamy on their 

• hardened faces. Their being all more or less 

- drunk doubtless emphasized this vicious aspect. 

J' Some few had the look of predestined sots, and 

' others appeared to have added drunkenness to 

Hhe list of their vices as they had the other 

accomplishments necessary to the equipment of 

Hheir career of crime. 

' Among the sots the women far outnumbered 

the men. We passed several groups of these 

8 



114 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

poor, shameless creatures, seated or lying on the 
roadside grass. One among them usually held a 
dark, evil-loolcing bottle, which was passed to the 
others and from which all drank without even the 
thought of shame. Their all too frequent stop- 
ping at the tap-houses along the roads apparently 
had not been enough to satisfy their demoniac 
thirst ; they could not wait for that slower pro- 
cess of intoxication. There was no appearance of 
gayety or merriment in the demeanor of these 
poor creatures ; they seemed to be possessed solely 
by the hideous determination of their vice. It is 
only the Englishman, I think, who proceeds to 
get as drunk as possible without mixing a little 
enjoyment with the act. 

This was the blot on the landscape, — these poor 
drunken wretches and the many taverns and tap- 
houses we met at every turning. Every ten min- 
utes or so, we woidd see the familiar sign, " John 
tliis, or Fanny that, licensed dealer in beer and 
spirits." The women behind the bar, as well as 
those the other side of it, appeared to do the most 
flourishing trade in these licensed demons. In 
more than half of these wayside taverns and beer- 
shops the bar-tenders were women, most of them 



FARE HAM. 115 

rosy, healthy, and fresh-looking, as conspicuously 
free from the taint of the vice they dealt in as 
their frailer customers were branded by its unmis- 
takable signs. It was the only refreshing human 
spectacle we saw during the first miles of our day's 
journey, — the sight of these hearty, strong, active 
barmaids, who during the intervals of trade could 
be seen easily enough through the wide-open doors 
and windows, going about numberless domestic 
duties. It is a characteristic of women shopkeep- 
ers, the world over, that they always appear to be 
doing several things at once. These barmaids were 
shopkeepers, but they were also mothers, house- 
keepers, gossips, and disciplinarians. Knitting and 
whipping their children were evidently the occupa- 
tions only of the idle moments, wiien customers 
were loafing over the counter until the moment 
came to order a fresh glass. The more serious 
duties of sweeping, dusting, running sewing-ma- 
chines, dressing and undressing their numerous 
offspring, were faithfully and efficiently performed 
in the slack periods of business hours. 

It was good to leave it all behind us, — all 
the wretchedness of the vice, and even the thrift 
and energy which made money out of England's 



116 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

curse. It was good to get at last into the broad 
open country, and to have the last miles of our 
journey lead us up a gentle hill or two, into ripen- 
ing grain-fields and among the wide meadows. 

A long line of chalk cliffs defined themselves 
above the meadows. Disposed at regular intervals 
along its length were several large forts. These 
we knew must be* the famous Portsdown fortifica- 
tions, and that Portsmouth itself must be near. 
A few moments later, a dark mass against the 
southern sky resolved itself into tall black chimney- 
pots, a forest of masts, and an indistinguishable med- 
ley of dusky buildings. This - was Portsmouth. 

The sight of a city and especially of a seaport 
town in the distance seldom fails in impressive- 
ness. Its size is doubled by the illusion which 
atmospheric effect creates. Portsmouth, as wo 
passed it slowly, might have been London itself, 
so vast and huge it looked, as it loomed forth 
from its misty gloom of smoke and sea-fog. Only 
the mast-heads and the steep chimneys, like the 
radius of a crown, lifted themselves up into 
the clear light. A fine noble castle towards the 
farther end of the town, we knew to be Southsea 
Castle. From the tower of the castle the British 



FARE HAM. 117 

I lion was flying with a more than usually belliger- 
1 ent aspect, as if inviting the world to mortal com- 
bat. Here on his own ground, with that mass of 
forts behind him, armed to the teeth, ready to 
fling the foe his iron gauntlet, there did indeed 
seem little doubt as to the result of any foreign 
attack. Coming thus suddenly out from the syl- 
van calm and repose of those meadow-fields which 
we had left behind, into this bit of country brist- 
ling with fortifications, gave us a very realizing 
sense of the causes that have insured England's 
meadows having been free for so many centuries 
from the heel of the foreign invader : she has 
been careful to preserve her reputation of being 
armed cap-a-pie ; and she has had a very ugly 
way of showing her teeth through her visor at 
the slightest provocation on foreign soil. 

The remainder of the road to Fareham was 
rurally pretty, with hedge-rows untrimmcd and 
a trifle straggling, — farmers' hedge-rows, we con- 
cluded, because only pasture-lands and farms were 
to be seen amid the gentle slopes that gradually 
gained c7'escendo enough to become hills. 

It was at the top of one of the longest of the 
hills that the opening in a large-arched bridge 



118 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

presented to our delighted eyes, as if Nature had 
been in a generous mood and had come out to 
give us a picture, our first glimpse of Fareham. 
A green lawn-swept street, with charming little 
houses masked in vines ; a small inland lake or 
pond, with drooping willows leaning sentimentally 
over its banks ; a wagonette full of children with 
a fair-haired mother driving under the trees to 
one of the larger houses facing the pond ; and a 
huge hay-cart filled with village youngsters pelting 
one another with poppies, — such was our first 
introduction to Fareham. 

When we drove up to the low, broad bow-win- 
dowed inn, we knew we had committed no mistake 
in judgment when we had decided to stop at Fare- 
ham. There might be better inns and prettier 
inland villages in England, but Fareham we were 
entirely willing to accept as a specimen and model 
of what rural England possesses in the quaint, 
the comfortable, and the picturesque. 

A tall handsome woman, still young and mod- 
estly but prettily dressed, stepped out to greet us 
with a smile, and in a pleasant, courteous tone 
asked if we would like to see our rooms ; that 
was the landlady. A fine-looking man, with 



FARE HAM. 119 

(straight clear eyes, also smiling, came a moment 
(later, and took our hand-bags ; that was our 
■landlord. A bell was rung, and a grinning hostler 
appeared, who took possession of Ballad, stroking 
'his wet coat as if he looked forward to rubbing 
'it down as a matter of personal satisfaction ; that 
'was the stable-man. We saw him a few moments 
•later from our bedchamber window doing it, the 
rubbing down, as if our getting Ballad into his 
heated condition had been a special favor to 
him. A waiter next appeared, also smiling, and 
a be-ribboned chambermaid, both of whom, with 
the landlady, preceded us to our rooms. They all 
stopped smiling only to begin it again when fresh 
orders were given. The rooms were in perfect 
order, yet the landlady bestirred herself to readjust 
a vase on the mantelpiece ; and the chambermaid 
shook out the snow-white curtains as if to display 
their purity. The waiter was too absorbed in 
undoing shawl-straps and dusting the luggage to 
give himself up to decorative embellishment. The 
rooms were perfect in the dainty completeness 
of their outfit. There was a sitting-room, with 
a broad bow-shaped window fronting on the wide 
village street, a table with writing-materials at just 



120 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

the right angle in that pretty crescent, really com- 
fortable chairs, and a reading-lamp. For " dumb 
companions," on the wall were some quaint old 
prints. The bedchamber was as pure as a virgin's 
bower, — a high four-post bedstead with cotton 
hangings, a dressing-table in white, curtains, and 
pale faded blue walls with the print of last-cen- 
tury designs on them. About the whole establish- 
ment, indeed, — about the little inn, the rooms, and 
the village street, as we looked out into it, — there 
was this old-time air, as if the comfort and the 
purity and the courtesy had not been thought of 
and arranged yesterday, but had slowly grown 
during the long, quiet generations, and been pa- 
tiently and lovingly added to, until this modest, 
tranquil, and altogether charming perfection had 
been attained. 

On the whole, we concluded that our waiter 
was the most complete, as a product, among this 
assemblage of perfections. Perhaps it was because 
we ended by seeing more of him than of the 
olliers in the little inn. He served all of our 
meals, of course ; and he was so genially, cour- 
teously garrulous it was impossible not to become 
more or less acquainted with him. There was 



FARE II AM. 121 

an air of past acquaintance with gentility about 
Brown, as he told us to call him, which assured 
us that he had not learned his manners even in 

^this perfect little inn. He had ways of passing 
a plate and of filling one's glass suggestive of a 
certain distant familiarity, as if family secrets in 

■ a remote past had found their way to his ear and 
he had not been found unworthy of the trust. 
His glance was beautifully paternal ; and there 
was a general benedictory appearance about his 
somewhat fat and flabby person which, to a watch- 
ful eye, carried with it a vague conviction of his 
having frequently played the part of a good Provi- 
dence to young lovers and to wayward youth. The 
smile he wore — the sweet, bland, mildly gleeful 
smile — could only have been acquired in a life 
consecrated to secret conspiracies against some- 
thing, which ought not to be found out. We 
attributed something of his interest in us to the 
fact that he appeared to entertain a veiled Ijut 
vigorous suspicion that we were on our wedding 
journey. He had for me a specially protective 
and tender manner, which was occasionally illu- 
mined by a pregnant smile that seemed to promise 
an understood compact of secrecy. 



122 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Like most conspirators, Brown had himself 
evidently fallen a victim to his own talent for 
intrigue. The color and size of his most conspic- 
noiis organ, his nose, hetrajed his all too frequent 
stealthy dealings with his master's port. 

His respect for us hegan with the inspection of 
the wines Boston ordered. His friendship for me 
dated from the moment he learned that I took no 
champagne ; regard deepened into admiration when 
he further was ordered to water my glass of 
claret. He was certain now that the bottles 
would outlast Boston's thirst. He next devoted 
himself to the satisfying of another appetite almost 
stronger than the vinous habit. He was too com- 
plete a provincial not to be curious. 

" Brown, how far is it to Winchester ?" 

"Twenty miles, sir, — a fine drive, sir." And 
then discreetly, a second later, " A long ways, sir, 
from the North too, sir." 

" The North ? " 

"The North of England. I took you for a 
Lincolnshire gentleman, begging your pardon." 

" We did n't come from the North ; we came 
from London." 

Surprise tempered by a vague incredulity was 



FARE HAM. 123 

■to be read in Brown's respectful glance. But his 
sense of decorum was too strong to embolden him 
to make further inquiries. 

" London is a fine place, sir. I 've been there in 
my time." 

" Yes, London is a fine city, and so is New York. 
We come from New York ; we are Americans." 
Boston had taken pity on him, his disappoint- 
ment was so visibly poignant. But the effect of 
the revelation of our nationality appeared to be- 
wilder Brown to the point of rendering him speecli- 
less. He feebly repeated "America," and began 
eying us furtively, as if he expected us suddenly 
to break out into some strange antics of behavior. 
He made an errand immediately after into the 
hall-way, where the ribbons of the chambermaid 
were fluttering behind the door. 

The chambermaid peeped at us through the 
cracks of the door. A few moments later, the 
landlord made an excuse for taking a more thor- 
ough and satisfactory inspection of our appear- » 
ance by entering after dinner to ask if the trap 
would be needed early the next morning. We even 
suspected that some of the travellers in the inn had 
been talien into the landlord's confidence ; for the 



124 CATHEDRAL DAYS. ;■ 

family next door to us, whom we had seen grouped 
about a pretty tea-table in the adjoining bow- ' 
window, manifested great interest in our incoming i 
and out-going. They filled the broad windows, 
craning their necks over one another's shoulders 
to get a better look. Even the handsome landlady 
stared after us as we passed out into the street. 

" Don't let us do it again, — don't let us say we 
are Americans ; it makes us so conspicuous. They 
are always expecting us to do something queer," 
I said, as we strolled out. 

" That is the reason I do mention it. I want 
them to see we don't do anything queer. I 'm 
giving them a, little lesson in the manners and 
customs of an unknown country. There is no 
better way to prove that we are like all other 
civilized people than by being like them." 

"Well, if you want to turn our pleasure-trip 
into an illustrated lecture, you can do so ; I pre- 
fer to travel incognito. They may take me for 
a chimpanzee if only they will not stare." 

" That they can't help doing, my dear," was 
Boston's gallant rejoinder ; but I observed that to 
keep his courage up to the level of his gallantry, 
he was obliged to light another cigar. 



FAREHAM. 125 

From a woman's point of view, a twilight walk 
is the best known substitute for a man's medita- 
tive after-dinner cigar. Walking abroad is at least 
an esca])e from the brooding melancholy which 
twilight breeds in-doors. The after-dinner hour in 
rural England is perhaps the only really trying 
one of the tourist's day. The tempting al-fresco ar- 
rangements which one finds in almost all continen- 
tal summer inns or hotels, — the cosey, charming 
gardens, the shrubs in pots, and the bits of foli- 
age under whose shade are placed the little iron 
settees and tea-tables so subtly suggestive of tete- 
d-tetes and prolonged starlit confidences, — these 
are unknown in England. The national standards 
of reserve and decorum forbid the traveller's en- 
joyment except according to the strictest English 
notions and ideals of propriety. Rigid seclusion is 
the first of the Briton's canons of good travelling- 
behavior. An English inn is built on the plan 
of a series of separate fortifications ; each travel- 
ler must be as unapproachable from inspection or 
intrusion as four walls can make him. 

Even a balcony with an awning is a combination 
of the picturesque and the comfortable that no Eng- 
lish inn has yet dreamed of adding to its list of 



126 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

luxuries. There are but two refuges, — the coffee- 
room, which is English for our American dining 
and reading room in one, or one's own private 
sitting-room. In the coffee-room commercial trav- 
ellers and business men are to be found reading 
the papers or writing letters ; but even their 
presence the waiters seem to look upon as intru- 
sive. All Englishmen who respect themselves 
dine and smoke in their sitting-rooms. This latter 
custom we had ourselves adopted as by far the 
more comfortable as well as the pleasanter way 
of travelling in England. With the national 
habit of and delight in personal privacy come 
many compensations ; for surely no other mode 
of inn or hotel life, in spite of pretty garden-beds 
and al-fresco tite-d-tetes on hard little iron chairs 
or settees beneath the shade of trees is com- 
parable to this cosey, home-like English fashion, 
which insures privacy and at least some sem- 
blance of home quiet, repose, and security. I 
know of no sensation more sootliing, no simple 
delight more delicious, than that of toasting one's 
slippered feet over the fire in the pretty sitting- 
room of some old English inn, while the noiseless 
waiter brings the five-o'clock tea ; or later, when 



FAREHAM. 127 

Liie spreads the dining-cloth, the repast is accom- 
^panied with the hixurious sense of the stillness 
ind the peace about one, with no flare of gas- 
light nor stare of curious-eyed fellow-travellers. 
,[t is this feeling of security and exclusiveness 
which turns an inn into a temporary home. 

That our little inn was looked upon in the 
light of a home at certain hours by various dwell- 
ers in this Fareham village, was proved to us 
during the evening. There came, towards nine of 
the clock, a sound of footfalls along the little hall, 
an opening and shutting of the dull green baize 
door which screened the room directly behind the 
small office. Tones of deep voices and of pleas- 
ant chit-chat echoed through the resounding little 
house, which with its well-seasoned walls and tim- 
bers was as resonant as an old violin. A sound 
of hissing boiling water, the click of glasses, and 
the unmistakable rattle of the spirituous artillery 
of a bar became more and more frequent. 

"Where are you going?" asked Boston, behind 
his newspaper, as I started towards the open door. 

" I am going to see how the village looks by 
starlight," I replied, with the miserable duplicity 
common to our sex. 



128 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

" Nonsense ! you can see it just as well from the 
bow-window." 

But I was already half-way down the broad 
stairs. An instant later I was out upon the little 
street. Starlight was certainly very becoming 
to the rural little town. The trees and the low 
houses seemed to coquet with the darkness. But 
what I had come to see, of course, was the picture 
the other side of that green baize door. Had I 
been a man, with a man's propensity for being 
the other side of green baize doors, I should long 
ere this have gone there honestly and straight- 
forwardly. Being a woman, witli a hopelessly 
plebeian and unconventional taste for looking at 
that part of life which is hidden away from us, 
I must needs intrigue to gain what was, after 
all, a very innocent pleasure. At last, a somewhat 
late but most obliging tapster turned in at our 
door. He made straightway for the green baize 
door. He opened it wide, and I, close upon his 
heels, saw the picture I had come to see. There 
was a long bright-red covered table, with two or 
three shaded lamps upon it. At the head of the 
table sat the handsome landlady, looking hand- 
somer than ever now ; for she was an evening 



FAREHAM. 129 

beauty, with tawny tints in her eyes and hair that 
needed a wealth of light to bring out all their 
hidden depths of color. Her husband was mov- 
ing about, filling glasses and passing pipes around. 
There were fifteen or twenty men seated in large 
comfortable chairs. There was no noisy talk or 
loud laughter. It was, I should say, a rather 
exceptionably well-bred gathering for any part of 
the world, — a gathering of men in whose society 
no woman need be ashamed to sit. Perhaps the 
woman's being there was the cause of the good 
manners, of tlie quiet, and the orderly self-restraint. 
Whatever the cause, it all made a very comfortable, 
cosey, home-like English scene. 

Our twilight walk through the Fareham streets 
had proved it to be a dull little town, with only 
1 a few fine old houses along its principal thorough- 
fare ; so the next morning we were off early on 
our way to Winchester. 

The road from the start was enchanting. It 
lay between fields and meadows brilliant in har- 
vest-ripening grain, and there were farms dotted 
I among them at just the right distances to make 
idark rich bits of color in the landscape. Tlie 
iwhole country breathed the peace of agricultural 



130 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

activity, with enough variety in outline to preserve 
it from monotony. A charming bit of country 
three miles from Fareham we knew to be Walthara 
Chase, famous among mediaeval sportsmen for its 
deer. Henry II. and Coeur de Lion had come, a 
few centuries ago, to pursue this sport and to 
partake of the gay and splendid hospitality of the 
bishop's palace, the ruins of which we came upon 
a few miles farther on. 

A few straggling houses and a church made a 
bit of a village. Then, at a sharp turn in the 
road, we drove past the magnificent ruins of the 
old palace, close beside the roadway, with a little 
lake on our right. The blue sky was framed in 
a dozen great arches, and the grasses and ivy 
had taken permanent possession of the grand 
halls and the roofless chambers. In its days of 
glory the palace must have been a kingly dwelling. 
The size and extent of the ruined arches, and the 
extensive walls were still suggestive of noble 
proportions, while the carvings over the windows 
and doorways were of lovely delicacy of work- 
manship. One could well believe that this palace 
must have been one of the finest examples in 
England of fifteenth-century domestic architecture. 



WALTHAM. 131 

Bishop Henri de Blois, who in the intervals of 
king-making turned to the fine art of building as 
his favorite pastime, certainly achieved one of his 
finest masterpieces in Waltham Castle. Mediaeval 
architect-bishops were artists as well as inspired 
builders ; for none but an artist would have built 
a great palace beside this lovely little lake, the 
former abbot's pond, once noted for its stores of 
fish, now the haunt of swallows and meadow-larks, 
who fluttered amid the tall grasses, singing their 
little hearts out as if conscious that they were 
the only live beings amid all this debris of dead 
greatness. To have looked out into this silent 
lake from yonder palace casements must have been 
like suddenly confronting Nature's quiet eye in the 
midst of the stormy conflict of the human passions 
shut up within those stately walls. What ideal 
surroundings for the Court and the great pre- 
lates to take their pleasure in ! — the country over- 
running with summer and fragrance, as rurally 
rustic as the palace was magnificently splendid ; 
Waltham Chase as their happy hunting-ground, 
and Winchester within easy distance if there 
were pageants or councils or tournaments to be 
participated in. 



132 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

1 presume it is as well, from the progressionist's 
point of view, to have been born as late as 
possible ; but there are weak moments when His- 
tory runs her fingers lightly over those forgot- 
ten notes of gay and debonair pleasures, when 
one would willingly forego many of the advan- 
tages which we of these later centuries so serenely 
enjoy, to have lived in those fine old days when 
the gayer delights of life were pursued as ardently 
as leisure and culture or money-making are now-a- 
days striven for, when life was not all a tragedy, 
and comedy tripped its light measure across the 
field of existence, flecking it with brilliant, riant 
dashes of color and joy. 

These reflections were doubtless suggested by 
the fact that our afternoon's drive bristled with 
historical associations. After leaving the palace 
with its dead-and-gone company of pleasure-loving 
bishops, we passed close by Avington House, once 
the residence of Charles II., and still more famous 
as the property of that luckless member of the 
Brydges family who, marrying the Countess of 
Shrewsbury, came to that sad end of unloved hus- 
bands by the sword of his faithless wife's lover, 
the Duke of Buckingham. The picture of that 



THE VALLEY OF THE IT CHEN. 133 

intrepid and audacious lady, apparelled as a page, 
calmly holding her lover's horse while the duel 
went on, that comes down to us in our garru- 
lous friend Pepys's diary, fitted in as a compan- 
ion portrait to those of the gay bishops who 
were so sure of heaven that they could afford 
to indulge in endless bouts of pleasure while on 
earth. 

Ballad, not having the wickedness of others to 
enliven his journey, gave signs of drooping just 
as we drove into the lovely valley of the Itchen, 
along the banks of the famous little river that 
makes this stretch of meadow-land one of Eng- 
land's most picturesque bits. Its beauty was even 
greater than its fame ; it was a divine little val- 
ley. The road wound in and out under avenues 
of noble elms and oaks, between gentle slopes 
covered with golden grain ; there were sleek cat- 
tle standing up to their middle in the flower- 
banked river ; there were odors in the air so 
luscious that the whole valley seemed a garden 
of perfume ; the grass was thicker, the trees were 
taller, the meadows were fairer, than we had yet 
seen elsewhere ; and the whole valley, its sweet- 
ness and plenty and peace, was delicately lighted 



134 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

by a rosy glow Avhicli made earth and sky seem 
quivering in a luminous pink bath. 

At a turn in the road we saw a city's roofs 
and spires glistening on the sides and summit 
of a hill directly in front of us. This city was 
Winchester. 



WINCHESTER. 135 



CHAPTER YII. 

WINCHESTER. 

" T AM glad Ballad is tired and hot ; we can go 
as slow as we like," I said, as we began 
to mount the hill. 

" You mean as slow as he likes. He is, as jou 
have justly observed, an admirable walker. As 
a walker I think he would bear off the prize in 
any slow-go-as-you-please gait ; and like most of 
us, what he does best he does oftenest." 

" Now, I call that ungrateful. He 's done par- 
ticularly well to-day. Just think how quick we 've 
come ! And all those hills ! " 

" Which we 've walked up, all three of us." 

" And who liked the walking, pray, and would 
get out again and again to see views and things ? " 

" Well, never mind Ballad ; he 's done well 
enough. But this is pretty nice, is n't it ? Ballad 
may walk, the slower the better." 

I should hardly have selected the word nice to 
describe the scene about us ; but men have a 



136 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

constitutional distaste for forcible or pictorial 
phraseology. I suppose the superlatives came in 
when women began to talk. 

The prospect was, in truth, enchanting. We 
were slowly making the ascent of a hillside which, 
at first an elm-shaded country -road, became grad- 
ually a city street. Above, glistening in the pink 
sunset, were a mass of red roofs and a tall tower 
on the summit, the latter rising into the sky like 
a tinted plume on some warrior's head-gear ; for 
the city, in spite of its rosy light, looked gray and 
armor-encased. There were bits of old walls and 
ancient towers and turrets, with lancet loop-holes 
to remind one of mediseval contests. The jagged 
teeth on the crenellated towers were set against 
the pink sky, like lion's claws in velvet. 

Of the general topography of the city we could 
only be certain of a few conspicuous features : 
first, that it was built along the banks of the 
Itchen, w^atering its feet pleasantly in the pretty 
stream ; then, that it took an upward bend along 
the steep sides of a long hillside ; and finally, that 
it cooled its brow on the summit, after its tortuous 
climb. Opposite, on the other side of the river, 
was the famous St. Catherine Hill, a long line 



WINCHESTER. 137 

of chalky ridges. Our own way led us more and 
more into a series of thickly settled, picturesque, 
but citified-looking streets. The bustle and traffic 
of a busy town-life were besetting our ears as we 
drove under the arched doorway of our inn, the 
"White Horse." 

Three waiters in white ties helped us to descend. 
A vision of a French cook coifed in his white cor- 
nered hat, seen through the vines that screened 
the kitchen from the courtyard, assured us that 
the cuisine felt it had a reputation to sustain. 
' " Winchester has, I believe, always had the rep- 
utation of living well," remarked Boston, compla- 
cently, after we had ordered a dinner designed as 
a delicate compliment to the only nation that under- 
stands making good soups. 

" Yes ; a city of bishops may be trusted to do 
that much. I suppose they imported their French 
cooks along with the taste for Norman arches. But 
do look at those chairs and at all the furniture ! 
Hasn't it a preposterously ecclesiastic air?" 

Boston laughed, and said he should be mistaking 
the buffet for an altar-piece and the bed for a 
chantry, he was certain, now that I had suggested 
the resemblance. 



138 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

There was, in truth, an absurdly impressive ap- 
pearance about the furniture of our two stately 
rooms. All the furniture had a high-church, epis- 
copalian aspect. There appeared to have been 
a pronounced taste for Gothic chairs and severe 
perpendicular outlines in the tables and sofas se- 
lected. No prints more profane than an assem- 
blage of celebrated church councils or cathedral 
interiors adorned the walls. It was just the sort 
of room in which a bishop miglit rehearse, with 
suitable gravity, scenes to be enacted later in the 
chapter-house ; he need not look in the mirror to 
see a reflection of his own dignity. 

The soup and the entrees were up to the approved 
ecclesiastical standard ; they were also worthy of 
the nationality of their maker. Only an English- 
man, however, can be trusted to cook Southdown 
mutton, we regretfully confided to each other as 
we looked upon the joint done to a crisp. 

Better than the French soup was the view from 
our windows. We were in luck again. The win- 
dows of our sitting-room opened upon the city's 
chief thoroughfare. 

It was a beautiful and perfect little jewel of an 
old street. It was delightfully irregular, wandering 



WINCHESTER, 139 

up the hill with the imdulatorj, uneven progress 
we had noticed as a characteristic of the Arundel 
High Street. It began its existence, as we found 
on a later inspection, at a bridge which covered 
the little river near an old mill. At the top of 

the hill it was crowned by a noble gateway and a 

'•I 

[fine mass of famous old buildings. In character 

the street had retained its mediaeval aspect in a 
'wonderful degree. It had the bulging facades, the 
projecting casements, and the gabled roofs which 
the earlier builders knew so well how to combine. 
They had divined the secret that the beauty of a 
street, like the charm of the human face, depends 
more on expression than on any mere perfection 
in symmetry. The street is lined with palaces, 
shops, hospitals, gateways, a sixteenth-century pi- 
azza, beneath whose open arcades nineteenth-cen- 
tury citizens still lounge and gossip, a market 
cross, and the old-fasliioned open butchers' stalls, 
whose warm meats communicate a pleasantly car- 
nivorous odor to the atmosphere. The western 
gateway at its summit seems to cut off Winches- 
ter from the rest of the world, as it did in reality 
of old when it had its own private little sins to 
commit. The Itchen, at its feet, is still the slen- 



140 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

der umbilical cord connecting the city with the 
rest of the kingdom, on whose destiny Winchester 
has had so powerful an influence. 

To write the history of this street would be to 
write the history of most of England's stirring 
events. 

It can be, indeed, with no ordinary tourist's set 
of commonplace emotions that one wanders about 
Winchester. The city is as full of historical 
suggestiveness as any in England. It has made 
enough history to suffice for a very respectaljle 
national career. It is an epitome of all the Eng- 
lish virtues, and has possessed its share of English 
capacity for crime. It has been murderous, treach- 
erous, imperious, dictatorial, tyrannical ; it has 
founded some of the finest charities, has built some 
of the noblest buildings, and perpetuated some of 
the most admirable educational systems in the 
world. While its murders have left a brilliant 
stain on its palace steps, and its lighter crimes 
have peopled its halls with a whispering-gallery 
of ghosts, in the midst of its wickedness Win- 
chester experienced brief returns to virtue, when 
enough good was done to make the blot on its 
escutcheon seem dim by comparison. 



WINCHESTER. 141 

Winchester could not ]iave been Ent^lish if it 
had not conscientiously erected buildings enough 
to commemorate its goodness, knowing, with the 
prescience of a bad conscience, that its wickedness 
could safely be left to historians. It is the office 
of history to be the embalmer of human frailty. 
The passion for building was doubtless invented 
when the great found their virtues were in dangier 
of being buried with them. 

" I think, on the whole, architecture and the 
virtues have the best of it here in Winchestei'," 
remarked Boston, as I propounded to him the 
above conclusion. 

" Wait till you re-read its history." 

" I don't intend to. Virtue and beauty are good 
enough for me. After all, why should we care how 
wicked they were when they've left us this?" — 
with a comprehensive sweep of his hand. 

The gesture included a distant group of turrets, 
the gateway at the top of the hill, the King's Cross, 
a great iron arm stretching half-way across the 
street holding the town clock, and a beautiful old 
arched doorway, which was too tempting not to end 
by luring us to pass beneath it; for we were out 
once more to take a twilight walk about the city. 



142 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

The archway led us into a qiiahit, perfect little 
bit of a street. It was filled up at one end b}- a 
curious old church, which we learned later was 
named St. Lawrence, whose portal was almost 
hidden out of sight, tucked away amid a lot of 
tiny shops and queer low-browed houses. In the 
half-dusk of the twilight hour there was some- 
thing indescribably mysterious about this assem- 
blage of closely packed old buildings. They had 
the air of conspirators. The silence added to the 
secrecy of the effect ; the archway seemed to 
separate this retired little corner from the bustle 
and activity of the broader thoroughfare. 

A rustle of trees in the sweet dusky air made 
us hasten our steps. The little street ended as 
abruptly as it had begun. We had soon passed 
into a large open space. Then, directly in front, at 
an oblique angle, there loomed up into the gloom 
of the coming night a superb avenue of elms. Be- 
yond them loomed something else so vast and 
stupendous it could be nothing save the great 
cathedral itself. 

We passed under the green arch of the elms, 
over the short sweet grass of the close. Grave- 
stones were dimly glistening here and there in the 






^i 




^ 



WINCHESTER. 143 

fading light, while the delicate mystery of twiliglit 
melting into night was thickening about us. A 
few steps farther on, the green arch above us came 
to an end, and the huge facade of the cathedral 
rose into the sky. In the rich gloom its stupen- 
dous outlines seemed almost to touch the stars 
that were coming out to light it. All details were 
lost ; only the mass as a whole was defined for us 
by the mingled play of the gloom and the tender 
glow. A splendid sweep of shadowy light swept 
the length of the long nave, girdling it with dark- 
ness, — a darkness which had deepened in the great 
buttresses till they looked like fissures in a hill- 
side. All the light there was in the sky had fo- 
cussed itself on the southern transept and the low 
square cent]'al tower, beating the marble into a 
dulled. jewelled iridescence. The sloping roof, as 
it rose into the light, looked like the pyramidical 
line of some great mountain ridge, tenderly ethere- 
alized as it neared heaven. 

It was not its size which made this first view 
of the cathedral so penetratingly impressive. It 
was the grandeur and the unspeakable majesty 
which the influences of the hour bestowed. The 
silence, the quiet stars, the dark mantle of the 



144 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

night, made an isolation as remote from the pro- 
fane surroundings of the outer world as if the 
great cathedral had been transported to some 
Egyptian desert and were resting on those silent 
sands. 

If the modern sight-seer fails to be impressed 
by some of the great spectacles of the world, and 
finds his emotional activities but feebly stirred 
before some of the shrines of beauty the woi-ld 
holds sacred, I am convinced it is because the mo- 
ment of observation is rarely rightly chosen. Art, 
like Nature, has her poetical moods, Avhen she can 
be studied pnder perfect conditions. The artist 
comes to learn the workings of these rare and fit- 
ful periods. If he sees deeper into beauty and 
lives nearer to it, it is because he has grown to 
know intuitively this moment of its tenderest, 
loveliest bloom. 

How different, for instance, would have been our 
impressions of this famous cathedral had we seen 
it first under the disenchanting influences of our 
next morning's approach ! The broad sunlight 
made the conspiracy of the little old buildings a 
very prosaic array of bric-a-brac shops. On the 
greensward of the close, among the gravestones, 




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WINCHESTER. 145 

on a very cheerful footing of intimacy, apparently, 
with tliese solemn reminders of death, were some 
children and goats playing at hide-and-seek. At 
the rear of the cathedral, near some rather 
shabby-looking buildings, hung same washing, — 
irreverent garments fluttering their new-born 
whiteness in the very face of their magnificent 
neighbor. 

Even the cathedral partook, at a first glance, 
of the general disillusionment. It was great, it 
was magnificent, both from its size and because 
of its noble proportions. But at first, and before 
one comes to the period of accepting its defects 
and looking only for the beauties which end by 
making one oblivious of the former, a vague 
feeling of disappointment ensues ; it comes from 
the sense that the vast mass is lacking, as a 
whole, in those qualities of the picturesque which 
are among the pre-eminently essential qualifica- 
tions of an impressive architectural etisemble. 
The eye unconsciously searches somewhat rest- 
lessly over the huge pile for a finished tower or 
for some imposing turret or spire, whose spring 
and lightness will float the mass and lift it into 

the sky. 

10 



146 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Once within the cathedrd,!, however, one is 
only conscious of an overwhelming delight and 
admiration. Tlie fact that the entrance through 
the western front had seemed insignificant as the 
approach to so splendid a building, is forgotten 
now. The glorious flood of light pouring in 
through the great western window, to which the 
entire facade was sacrificed by Bishop Edington, 
makes one oblivious to all else save the sense of 
the splendid lighting that makes the farthermost 
perspectives clear as a noonday forest. It is due 
to this famous Edington window that the cathedral, 
the largest this side of the Alps, is the least gloomy 
in all the world. It has an open-air, sunlit atmos- 
phere I remember in no other of the great English 
or continental cathedrals. 

A curious story is told of the glass in this win- 
dow. After Cromwell's soldiers had run their 
swords through each jewelled figure that filled the 
splendid old windows, some industrious and pains- 
taking citizen went about collecting the broken 
fragments that lay on the floor. These were by 
him carefully preserved ; and after the restoration 
had made it safe for them to be produced, this 
discreet and far-seeing preserver returned his 



WINCHESTER. 147 

valuable collection to the cathedral. The bits were 
carefully arrayed in a heterogeneous mosaic, and 
( now form a kind of crazy-quilt pattern in the 
traceries of the huge window. The rich reds, 
I the deep purples, and the golden ambers gleam 
] with all their old famed jewelled lustre. The 
3 sunlight, imprisoned in those nests of color, 
I escapes to carry the secret of its luminous 
t brilliancy into the fartliermost shadows, tinting 
I the dusk under the great roof, and flecking in 
" patterns of fine gold " the uneven tomb-paved 
floor. Through the maze of that prismatic morn- 
ing light we passed slowly down the great nave 
luider its glorious perpendicular archings ; we lin- 
gered for a long half-hour in the rough, unfinished 
Norman transepts, remains of the Cyclopean work 
left by the early Norman bishop-builders. The 
warrior has left the impress of his military taste 
on all these early Norman cathedrals. It is easily 
seen to be the work of men who were accustomed 
to build fortresses as well as cathedrals, when 
the cathedrals, indeed, were fortresses and must 
be strong before they could be beautiful. These 
grand old transepts might have resisted any num- 
ber of sieges. There are centuries of significant 



148 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

change in manners and in men to be read in the 
tremendous contrast afforded between those deli- 
cate, perpendicular, branching traceries out yonder 
in the nave, and these giant fortress-like transepts. 
Think of the audacity of the man who should dare 
to transform those stern features into the elegance 
and symmetry of the later Gothic ! The man whose 
genius and daring made him divine that such a 
transformation was possible, was William of Wyke- 
ham. His predecessors, in order to complete the 
beauty of the great cathedral, had added either 
entirely new portions, such as the Lady Chapel, 
built by Bishop de Lucy, or the original Norman 
structure had been taken down and entirely re- 
constructed, as was done under Bishop Edington 
in the presbytery, the western portion of the nave, 
and the triforium. But it was reserved for the 
original genius of Bishop Wykeham to deliber- 
ately change the old Norman work to the soaring 
perpendicular into which the Gothic of his day 
had only just begun to bloom. So triumphant 
was the success of this stupendous venture that 
not a trace of the Norman structure in the long 
nave, the most beautiful in England, or in the 
aisles, is to be discovered. This triumphant feat 



WINCHESTER. 149 

probably stands unrivalled in the history of arclii- 
tcctural transformations. The three great features 
of the interior of Winchester — the elaborate per- 
pendicular nave and side aisles, the rude colossal 
Norman transepts, and the lovely Early English 
of De Lucy's work in the presbytery — combine in 
producing such an ensemble of striking architec- 
tural contrasts as makes this interior perhaps 
unrivalled in interest in England. It would cer- 
tainly be difficult to conceive of a result more 
remarkable in the union of the grand and the 
picturesque. Part of this picturesqueness is due to 
its being so richly furnished with tombs, chantries, 
statues, monuments, and banners. The chiselled 
monuments and stately airy chantries branch in 
their upshooting lines towards the great roof, like 
slender tree-trunks beneath the shade of loftier 
forest-heights. Under one of the stateliest of 
the throne-like chantries we came upon William 
of Wykeham's tomb. Only some semblance of a 
throne would have sufficed to enshrine the mem- 
ory of so autocratic a spirit. He was one of 
those magnificent prelates who during his life 
"reigned at court," according to Froissart, "every- 
thing being done by him, and nothing without 



150 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

him." With such superlative pre-eminence dur- 
ing a long and triumphant earthly career, when 
he " reigned " as courtier, wit, engineer, architect, 
bishop, and chancellor, he would hardly have been 
human if he had not wished to carry something 
of this state with him beyond the shades of death ; 
so that it is no surprise to learn that between the 
busy hours of so varied and brilliant a career 
Wykeham found time to arrange it with his archi- 
tectural genius to raise a monument in his own 
behalf. This chantry, with its rich and yet regally 
majestic elegance and severity of style, was de- 
signed by him and built on the spot where, as 
a boy, he had been wont to offer up his childish 
prayers to the Virgin. One can forgive much 
of that foolish yet harmless human frailty, the 
vain longing for eternal remembrance, to a man 
whose transcendent genius peopled England with 
some of its noblest buildings, and who, it is sup- 
posed, was the real inventor of perpendicular tra- 
cery, that last and richest fruit to bloom on the 
lovely Gothic stem. 

Chantries, tombs, monuments, and mortuary 
urns succeed one another in such bewildering vari- 
ety, blazoning forth such a wealth of virtue, such 



WINCHESTER. 151 

a multitude of military achievements, such an in- 
exhaustible array of talents and capacities, that 
genius and goodness and greatness come to appear 
as commonplace here as mediocrity elsewhere. 
Winchester has, indeed, been so rich in great 
men that even the largest cathedral in England 
is found none too large in which to bury them. 
Greatness under its aisles dwindled into such 
dwarfed proportions that in the presbytery yon- 
der, above the screens, in those quaintly curious 
mortuary chests, the bones of Saxon kings and 
bishops lie comfortably mingled together. 

King Rufus might himself be in very grave doubt 
as to the authenticity of his own osseous frame- 
work, since what are supposed to be the royal 
fragments of that monarch were picked up after 
the fall of the tower, and somewhat promiscuously 
handled later by irreverent Parliamentary troops. 
Verily the wearing of a crown has not been found 
to be the most stable performance even in an Eng- 
lish burying-ground. 

Some among the wearers of ecclesiastical crowns 
have been suffered to lie in more comparative peace. 
Even in death the hand that carries the pastoral 
staff seems to hold within its grasp heaven's 



152 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

hidden thunderbolt of vengeance. To connect the 
staff with any idea of spiritual guidance in the 
case of some among these bishops would be to de- 
mand some very athletic gymnastics on the part 
of one's imagination. With Henri de Blois, for 
instance, — that fine old martial prelate who " wore 
arms, mingled in war, and indulged in all the 
cruelties and exactions of the time;" who, when he 
was not fighting or king-making or stealing bene- 
fices or castles, pleased his leisure with the refined 
amusements of building ; wdio also could found 
the noblest charities as easily as he could "con- 
vey," in Pistol's phrase, a foot of Saint Agatha or 
the thumb of Saint James for his cathedral when 
the latter was in need of some really notably holy 
relics, — one would hardly go to such a middle- 
age combination of ferocity, genius, and unscrupu- 
lousness for a delicate adjustment of one's spiritual 
relations with Deity. 

Under the masses of the stone embroideries 
which cover almost every inch of the great Beau- 
fort's chantry yonder, lies the stately recumbent 
figure of the Cardinal, wdiose portrait Shakspeare 
has immortalized with even more vivid force than 
the sculptor's chisel. It is a dark portraiture. 



WINCHESTER. 153 

' with Rembrandtish shadows of iniquity in it ; but 
} that picturesque mingling of the good and the bad 
• there was in the all too " rich Cardinal," the stately 
1 Beaufort, will survive all attempts of the historian 
1 to produce a more faithful and lenient delineation. 

It was a relief to turn away from the vices of 
: the great, and even from the magnificence of the 
state in which their dark glory of achievements 
lies buried, to the unostentatious, simple tombs 
about us, — to those poorer tablets and monuments 
which commemorate the gentler lives of some 
whom we have all grown to love as a part of our 
nobler, sweeter lives. 

Under a white tablet, as pure and snowy as her 
spirit, in the north aisle, lies the body of Jane 
Austen. The inscription is characterized by a 
directness and simplicity so admirable she her- 
self might have been the writer thereof : " Jane 
Austen, known to many by her writings, endeared 
to her family by the varied charms of her char- 
acter, and ennobled by Christian faith and charity, 
was born at Steventon, in the county of Hants, 
Dec. 16, 1775, and buried in this cathedral July 
24, 1817. She openeth her mouth with wisdom, 
and in her tongue is the law of kindness." 



154 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

A soul as gentle, and one whose delicate genius 
for discovering the hidden joys that dwell in the 
world has made him the immortal companion of 
every lover of the woods and streams, is buried in 
the opposite transept. Izaak Walton, that " prince 
of fisliermen," lies under a plain black marble slab, 
as humbly as he doubtless walked among his in- 
feriors, in his shabby hose and neglected wig, dur- 
ing his peace-loving life. As he is known to have 
died in the house of his son-in-law, who was a 
prebendary of Winchester, all the streams and 
river-banks near the city must have been the 
scenes of his sylvan experiences, and the inspira- 
tion of that genial philosophy which has made the 
delicate flame of his genius light up so many of 
our dull hours. 

But with the best disposition in the world to 
linger among the tombs of these lesser great ones, 
whose immortality has been won by the more 
plebeian birthright of genius, so richly incrusted 
is this cathedral with the memorials and reminders 
of those whom destiny and history in combination 
have crowned with fame, that one is confronted 'at 
every turn with some new name or device which 
arrests the eye and stays the step. 



WINCHESTER. 155 

. We had turned into the Lady Chapel to look at 
some particularly lovely bacchic ornamentation on 
;5ome of the capitals, — vines, grapes, leaves, and 
tendrils as tenderly carved as if meant to crov/n 
a god instead of a column, — when we chanced on 
a faded chair. The chair in itself was not remark- 
.able either for beauty or grace ; but in that moon- 
shaped curve and on that now worn and faded 
velvet Queen Mary had sat when in this chapel 
.she gave her hand to Philip of Spain. It was 
ithe wickedest hand-clasp ever interchanged ; for 
it was the pledge of those two cold-blooded fa- 
natics to make English heretical blood How farther 
than English rivers run. English beauty, however, 
as if foreseeing its decimation, had, at this wed- 
ding ceremony, a moment of brilliant triumph be- 
fore the lights were put out and the fagots were 
fired ; for the historians of the period tell us that 
the English court beauties put the darker olive- 
cheeked Spanish women under a total eclipse in 
the beautiful little chapel. Their fresh complex- 
ions made their Southern sisters look sallow. 
They completed their revenge later at the mar- 
riage banquet and ball, where their stateliness 
made Spanish grace seem wanting in elegance. 



156 CATHEDRAL DAYS. \ 

Even a little persecution could be endured with ; 
equanimity after such a triumph. A few years 
later, the Gallic saying " II faut souffrir pour 
etre belle " needed, presumably, no translator. 

In spite of this unhallowed association, it is im- 
possible not to return again and again to this 
apsidal portion of the cathedral. The wealth of 
ornamentation and the inexhaustible variety of 
beauty in the choir, presbytery, chapels, and 
chantries, together with the marvellously lovely 
lighting, or rather darkening, from the effect of 
the deep shadows, make this eastern end full of 
peculiar fascination. In the choir one lingers 
longest, perhaps, over the carved stalls, whose 
delicate foliaged ornamentation seems to have 
been carved by the sun and the wind rather thau 
by the chisel. Beyond is the magnificent reredos, 
so ingeniously elaborate as to make the minutiae 
of lace-work insignificant by comparison. Behind 
this great altar screen-work of embroidery is 
a series of shrines known as the feretra, or 
shrines, of patron saints. Here the glory of 
workmanship has given place to the strictly pro- 
fessional necessities of the place ; for here, in 
early superstitious days, sick persons, awaiting 




Chantries, Winchester. 



Page 156. 



WINCHESTER. 157 

some miraculous cure, were allowed to remain 
over night, that they might tJie more obstinately 
wrench their salvation from the saints enshrined 
above, — from Saint Swithun, Saint Birinus, and 
other sainted workers of cures. 

With the superstition something also of that 
olden talent for religious enthusiasm has vanished. 
Those ardent troops of pilgrims, who were so sure 
of their saints, arc now replaced by pilgrims bent 
on a very different mission. The pilgrims in 
search of the picturesque, who level opera-glasses 
at the stone effigies whose feet those earlier pilgrims 
bathed with the passion of their believing tears, 
are more numerous now, on week-days at least, 
than the worshippers. We came again and again, 
at all hours and at all seasons, to morning and 
evening service, in the hours when the whole of 
the vast interior should resound only to the echo 
of devout footsteps, and it always was the tour- 
ist, rather than the worshipper, who formed the 
conspicuous plurality among the visitors. The 
Englishman and the Englishwoman (who is the 
better saint) do not go to church to pray. The 
closet is a place more in conformity with the 
national reserve and the abhorrence of emotional 



158 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

parade. Thus these* great and magnificent cathe- 
drals are as empty and as silent as deserted 
palaces. At evening service, it is true, dark 
drab-colored figures, old ladies with sweet pious 
faces and an air of subdued provincial calm, a 
few younger women, among them sometimes a 
lovely fair-faced girl, and a child or two, passed 
within the choir screen and formed the little band 
of worshippers, for whom the long line of deans, 
choristers, and vergers, with their elaborate vest- 
ments, seemed a useless and wasted pageant. 
One misses the troops of beggars — the squad 
of the ill-clad, the cold, the hungry, and the 
homeless — who flock under the great roofs of 
the continental cathedrals as to a natural refuge. 
One misses also the earnest passionate faces, the 
lips moving in half-audible prayer as the fingers 
slip over the worn pater-nosters, the bowed forms, 
and the bended knee of those more spectacular- 
loving worshippers who love to make their piety 
a public thing. 

Here, on the contrary, there is the dignity of 
reserve, there is order, there is the holy calm of 
silence. Even the chairs under the great aisles 
are placed in precise lines. They can safely be 



WINCHESTER. 159 

left there ; none will come to disturb them. The 
priests issue from their vestry clothed in the 
majesty of their dignified calm ; the lessons are 
intoned with beautiful but cold correctness ; the 
boy-choristers' voices rise up under the great 
arches with sexless purity and unimpassioned ac- 
cent ; the prayers are whisperingly responded to 
by the little group of the devout ; and then all 
silently rise and pass out, and God's temple is as 
silent as a tomb. 

One must come to England to see what Protes- 
tantism really means as a religion, — how deep 
the religious feeling may be, and yet how calm 
and unmoved, almost to the point of seeming in- 
difference, the outward bearing remaius. I have 
sometimes wondered if the tenacious English rev- 
erence for decency may not be a strong and potent 
element in their religious observance ; if in the 
logical make-up of even the dullest and poorest 
there may not be some vague notion of the relation 
that ought to exist between a clean shirt and a 
conscience pure enough to approach its Maker. 
Certain it is that one rarely if ever sees a tattered 
worshipper under these vast aisles. It is a pity, 
because, once within, the beggar would find him- 



160 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

self in a company of his fellows. The saints wear 
their rags and ruined draperies very complacently. 
But then they were canonized for it; and enforced 
impecuniosity, in search of eleemosynary pennies, 
cannot always be sure of earning an aureole to 
make its poverty glorious. 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 161 



CHAPTER VIII. 

A COLLEGE AND AN" ALMSHOUSE. 

"V T little city ever lent itself so admirably to 
-^ ^ the innocent designs of two tourists bent 
on the capture of every hidden secret of its ancient 
charm and antique beauty, as Winchester. One 
may almost count on an adventure with the pic- 
turesque at every turning. A surprise appears 
to lie in wait for one at the corner of each of 
its perfect streets. Gateways open at most unex- 
pected angles, beneath which one passes from the 
bustle of its lively old streets into the cloistral 
calm of some ancient convent or palace ; or one 
confronts the crenellated tops of mediaeval walls to 
find within such a nest of old houses, in so per- 
fect a state of preservation as to make it appear 
as if the enclosure had been built for the sole 
purpose of affording a fortified protection against 
decay and ruin. 

The contrast presented between such model 

specimens of antique life and the active, stir- 

11 ' 



162 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

ring, eveiy-clay modern living invests these old 
towns and cities with their perfect quality and 
charm. In spite of its venerable and austerely 
remote age, Winchester ends by impressing one 
with its having already included the nineteenth 
century among its collection of historical periods. 
The bargaining, for instance, which we could not 
fail to notice, from the quite audible tones in 
the little open shops, gave us a very realizing 
feeling that if time was fleeting, trade at least 
was long. The Winchester buyers and tradesmen 
have not lost all their ancient talent for investing 
the simple act of buying and selling with those 
difficulties which raise it into an art. Its citizens 
have had a long tutelage in trade. From the time 
of the early Norman kings to the reign of Henry 
VIII. , its great annual fairs on St. Giles' Hill, just 
outside the town, attracted the great merchants 
from Flanders and France and Italy, who came to 
buy English cloth. The little city still retains 
some pretty customs and habits as a legacy of 
that lost glory of commercial supremacy. We 
chanced to prolong our stay over the market-day, 
w^hich, in England, is still held on Saturday. Early 
in the morning strolling venders and pedlers 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 163 

erected little booths and improvised gay holiday 
shows along the undulating High Street. All day 
the thoroughfare was thickly packed with a swarm- 
ing mass of humanity, — with farmers and their 
wives, the latter in wonderful poke-bonnets of 
the last century, and their more modern daugh- 
ters in the modified French poke of our own 
decade ; with townspeople and county squires, 
who crowded about the shops, the booths, and 
the gayly decked carts, swarming into the mid- 
dle of the street and filling the air with the 
noise of their bargaining. There were brilliant 
dashes of color among the dull blouses and 
the flimsy printed lawns, contributed by the 
numerous red coats of the soldiers ; for Win- 
chester is a brigade station, and we concluded 
that the entire brigade had assumed, as part of 
its military obligations, the duty of lighting 
up the sombre nineteenth-century dulness with 
the brave splendor of its fatigue-coats and gold 
lace. 

We followed, at a discreet distance, a group of 
these sons of war on their stroll through the 
crowd, up to the top of the hill. It was partly 
with the desire to learn whether the day's unwonted 



164 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

animation had spread up and beyond the imperial 
crown of the great gateway, and also because we 
were in search of a palace and a fountain. The 
sons of war deserted us before we had discovered 
either. They passed, in a body, beneath a swing- 
ing open door near the gateway. The door re- 
mained open long enough for us to catch a 
glimpse of a charming pair of blue eyes, a mass 
of curly hair, a trim jaunty figure, and a row 
of shining glasses. We were no longer in doubt 
as to the cause of the brigade's unanimous pref- 
erence for beer a mile away from the barracks, 
even if to drink it they must climb the long steep 
hill. 

The fountain lay so close to the little beer-shop 
that we could hear the click of the glasses and the 
short bass notes in the laughs that went up within. 
The admonition contained in the lines cut on the 
stone pedestal of the fountain seemed curiously 
ineffectual and meaningless with that rival estab- 
lisliment and its potent magnet so near. Who 
would even stop to read the appeal on the old 
fountain ? — 

" Stop, fiieiidt!, and drink your fill, 
And do not use my fountain ill." 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 165 

(The thill stream of water trickling into the 
oj)en basin seemed of a piece with most of the 
\\ ise counsel in the world, — a slender treble of 
warning drowned in the deep chorus of the 
unheeding. 

The mass of gray shadow which filled up the 
foreground directly in front of us, as we turned to 
, the right, could be nothing else save the palace 
which we had come to find. If it was a palace 
it had so very pronounced an ecclesiastical aspect 
as at first to lead us to infer it was a church. But 
as we had been told to find in this ancient pal- 
ace of Henry III.'s reign one of the most perfect 
examples of domestic architecture of tliat palace- 
building period, the fact of its interior being 
divided into aisles by pillars, and the long church- 
like windows, that further served to emphasize 
its I'cligious character, only proved the deficiencies 
of our own architectural standards. The series of 
murders — which historians, with more amenity than 
veracity, call executions — that liave taken place 
in the courtyard of the castle make it, on the 
whole, much safer for the tourist at once to estab- 
lish its identity as a palace. The Clmrch has had 
so many such dark stains to hide Avithin its own 



166 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

mantle, it is but generous to allow the State to 
stand sponsor for a few of those bloody necessities. 
The luckless Earl of Kent came to his execution 
here ; and in the seventeenth century several 
priests marched wearily up the long hill to look 
their last on earth over the stone parapet which 
crowns the hill, and beyond which lies such a 
glorious prospect of the city, the cathedral, and the 
sloping hills. 

The least depressing association with this palace 
is the fact that to its keeping has fallen the honor 
of preserving a rare and singular painting. It is 
so old that its history is lost in conjecture. The 
painting represents King Arthur's Round Table ; 
the gallant king himself in the centre, Avearing his 
crown, the twenty-four radiations of which bear 
each the name of some famous knight. The 
severe, upright-looking monarch, with his gro- 
tesque limbs out of drawing, and his strange 
history-flowering crown, seemed admirably in keep- 
ing with the solemn cathedral-like interior, the 
heraldic bearings on the old stained glass, and 
the air of brooding silence we had left behind us. 
It was the ghost of the past come to take posses- 
sion of this ghoulish palace. 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 167 

Our walk that afternoon did not end with our 
j' discovery of the castle. We descended the hill by 
' making a detour among a number of little streets, 
I avoiding the more thronged thoroughfare. We 
' were rewarded for our temerity in plunging into 
1 these unknown labyrinths by stumbling on a 
1 number of little adventures. We learned, among 
other things, that all of the Winchester inhabi- 
tants who were not shopping on High Street were 
very busy doing nothing, unless lolling out of 
narrow casements and leaning against door-jambs, 
exchanging the small pence of conversational 
amenities, may be termed a form of industry. It 
was quite evident that market-day in the little 
city was looked upon as a quasi holiday, — a time 
for a loosening of the moral tension and for an 
unwonted indulgence in the breaking of the 
eternal English silence. We might almost have 
thought ourselves in some French town, such was 
the din of the voices and the clatter of heavy- 
booted feet over the rough stones. The faces could 
never have been anything but English, with their 
fresh high color, their calm and immobile expres- 
sion, and the soft liquid eyes. Beauty among the 
women in England appears to diminish in propor- 



^ 



168 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

tion as the rank in life increases. These streets 
were filled with charmingly pretty girls and fine- 
looking women, whose type can only be classed 
as rnstic, because the word seems best to describe 
the delicious quality of their freshness and riant 
health. Two girls standing in an open doorway, 
with close little English hats and white netted 
veils, made a charming little picture for us as we 
passed down one of the wider streets. Their air 
of simple unaffected naturalness was rather height- 
ened than otherwise by the fact that they were 
both munching tarts; and this proof of their 
hearty and unabashed young appetites reminded 
us forcibly that a two hours' walk up and down 
crooked streets would make the sight of a cake- 
shop a most welcome spectacle. 

At the turn of the next street, as if in answer 
to our wish, Ave stumbled on a really astonisliing 
collection of pastry. For nearly two streets, on 
either side of the way, every other shop appeared 
to be a cake-shop. Every variety of jumble, muffin, 
tart, seed-cake, plum-cake, and turnover, known 
to the inventive mind of cake-making man, was 
arranged in such multitudinous confusion and pro- 
fusion that nothing but a proximity of boy could 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 169 

oossibly explain so many rival establishments ey- 
.ng one another so complacently. 
IJi " I have my suspicions that we are nearing the 
iCoUege ; only a college could eat and pay for so 
\many cakes," I remarked to Boston, as we stood 
.making our choice of the several shop-windows in 
jfront of us. 

I The suspicions were entirely confirmed by the 
appearance of two dashing young fellows, carrying 
-the train of their black gowns over their arms, and 
wearing the well-known three-cornered Wykeham- 
ite hat. They were of stalwart build, and both 
boasted a very perceptible growth of virgin mus- 
taches ; and they were engaged in no less serious 
an occupation than the eating of two large seed- 
cakes. Age in this case, it was quite evident, 
had nothing to do with an appreciation of tarts. 
The shops, we discovered as we strolled past them, 
were peopled with numbers of young gentlemen 
of similar tastes ; however grown up their appear- 
ance might proclaim them to be, their capacity for 
devouring unlimited cakes proved there was nothing 
venerable at least in their fresh young appetites. 

College Street, which ended by leading us directly 
to the college, is flanked on the side nearest that 



170 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

famous collection of buildings by a wall so high 
and so formidably protective as to suggest its 
capacity for withstanding a very respectable siege. 
Doubtless the wall has served this very obvious 
purpose in the defence and security of the build- 
ings ; for these latter date back to a time when 
every house needed to be a fortress. In Saxon 
days Winchester had already gained its reputa- 
tion as an educational centre. King Alfred and 
Ethelwold were sent here to be under the influ- 
ence of the learned Saint Swithun. Five hun- 
dred years later, when William of Wykeham raised 
the present noble buildings on their ancient founda- 
tions, the system of education which he established 
increased the fame of the college to such a de- 
gree as to make it stand among the first in the 
world, — a pre-eminence it maintains until the pres- 
ent day. 

As we entered the courtyard, we seemed all 
at once to have entered into a different climate. 
There was something peculiarly soft and sweet in 
the air. It was more than sweet ; it was sweetish. 
The air was heavy with a fragrance which aj)- 
peared to penetrate into all parts of the grounds 
and the buildings. When we learned later that 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 171 

I the college still brews its own beer, the mystery of 
this rich soft odor was revealed. It is tlie dis- 
tilling that makes the college appear to have a 
climate of its own. William of Wykeham had 
presumably some relish for the good things of 
life, although doubtless his taste did not take the 
now classical Wykehamite preference for tarts 
over other dainties. He made very ample provis- 
ion that his boys should not suffer for the essen- 
tials of life. Beside the brewery, which is close to 
the street, there stands a building, now empty, 
where until very recently the college did its own 
beef-killing. With an abattoir, a brewery, and the 
college bakers and cooks, the institution was as 
independent of the rest of the world as all self- 
respecting institutions should be. 

That a man's stomach was of far more impor- 
tance than the condition of his skin in those old 
days before the fine art of cleanliness was dis- 
covered, was very forcibly proved by the contrast 
presented between the grand old mediaeval kitchen, 
of the proportions of a palace audience-chamber, 
and the washing apparatus of the same period. 
The latter is now shown among the curiosities 
of the college. In the courtyard was a low 



172 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

arched recess, within which stood a moderately- 
sized square stone trough. This, we were assured, 
was the primitive lavatory, bath and basin in one, 
of those less scrupulously cleanly days. It was 
assuredly most complete in the economy of its 
equipment. No Yankee invention for supplying 
an entire college with an apparatus of that nature, 
one which should combine simplicity with cheap- 
ness, could hope to equal so perfect an arrange- 
ment. Imagine the spectacle of seventy or eighty 
boys in line on frosty mornings awaiting their 
turn at that ice-cold basin. Such a reminder of 
past sufferings in that line makes one's sympathies 
with the great medisBval unwashed very active. 
Tb' only wonder is, if English boys have grown 
up under influences so adverse to the develop- 
ment of a love of personal cleanliness, how it 
comes that the daily bath has now become the 
sign by which, the world over, the Englishman 
betrays his nationality. In keeping with the Spar- 
tan severity of the washing-trough was the primi- 
tive character of the dormitories. A still more 
eloquent reminder of the discipline maintained 
in those ruder, hardier days are the warning 
mottoes on the walls of the big school-room, — " Aut 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 173 

disce aut discede : manet sors tertia ca^di," — and 

I the various devices illustrating the same ; one of 

the quaint paintings being a vivid portrayal of the 

1 meaning of " sors tertia," the birch. The old oak 

) forms, on which the boys sit astride, and their 

! " scots " still remain ; both bear the hieroglyphic 

writing of which every boy appears to have the 

secret. 

Architecturally one's interest centres in the 
college chapel, which is of great beauty. It bears 
evidence, in all the features of its refined and 
perfect proportions, of the genius and taste of its 
builder, William of Wykeham having built it in 
1387. It is the more interesting as proving that 
wonderful architect's versatility in dealing with 
different styles, the severe simplicity of the Early 
English interior of this delightful little chapel 
differing as widely as possible from the more 
ornate perpendicular of his work in the cathedral. 
The cloisters are in an equally perfect state of 
preservation, with some rare and charming tracer- 
ies in the arcades. Here, in the cool sweet damp 
of the summer-time, the Wykehamites in olden 
days came to walk or to sit as they conned their 
lessons. The stone benches are as worn as if they 



1T4 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

had been made originally of more impressionable 
wood. They are as scratched with names and 
dates as only school-boys and glaciers know how 
to scratch. Many of the names one reads over the 
archways or along the cornices are among those 
now great and famous. Among them the initials 
" T. K." are a reminder of Bishop Ken, that 
courageous churchman who, as Prebendary Ken, 
refused to allow the gay wanton Nell Gwynne to 
enter the deanery on the occasions when her lover 
Charles II. had the impulse to lodge there during 
one of his flying visits. 

Another kind of hand-writing still more elo- 
quent than these scrawled great names is written 
on the tablets and brasses in the little open 
arcade adjoining the chapel. Here, as well as 
in the chapel, are memorial tablets commemo- 
rating the bravery and gallant deeds of those 
Wykehamitcs who have fallen on the battle-field 
in defence of their country. Some bore very recent 
dates. The Zulu and Afghanistan wars have 
mown down many a Winchester hero ; and here 
was the record of their glorious courage blazoned 
in gold and black on the shining brass tablets. 
There is something stupendously fine in this speedy 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOU.-^E. 175 

recognition of heroism. In England, if a man 
loses his life for his country, at least he may count 

J on her not forgetting the sacrifice. This admi- 
rable and hearty recognition of a man's services 
must breed the very heroism it commemorates. 
There can be no more stirring appeal to youthful 
imaginations and to young courage than just such 

[ eloquence as this, — the eloquence of heroism aure- 

I oled by death and crowned by public recognition. 
It was impossible, however, to entertain such 

■ a sombre assemblage of departed heroes in the 
company of the very lively young gentlemen who 
were engaged in cricket and ball matches in the 
playground at the back of the college buildings. 
These grounds are of great extent, ending only 
with the river, which makes a silver thread of 
gleaming light in among the more distant meadows. 
There were a number of the boys crossing the 
river, on their way up towards St. Catherine Hill, 
a favorite playground on a still wider plane of 
extension. It all formed a charming, brilliant 
prosi)cct, — the green fields, the splendid trees, the 
soft summer sk}-, and the added animation of the 
romping, ball-tossing, fine young English lads with 
their bats and their cricket. 



1T6 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Their holiday gaj'ety was infectious. In spite of 
our long walk we did not feel in the least inclined 
to go back into the narrow, close little streets of 
the city. These soft, brilliant meadows and the 
flowery river-banks were altogether too tempting 
company to forsake on such a golden afternoon. 

Our stroll took us along the very edge of the 
river, under noble trees, with the full breadth of 
the hills on the opposite side, on which the after- 
noon shadows were sleeping as if on a mother's 
breast. We traversed several fields, green, star- 
gemmed with the trefoiled buttercup, and behold ! 
again more ruins. A noble mass sprang up, as if 
magic impelled, at a sudden bend in the road. 

In taking the most innocent walk about Win- 
chester, bent only on pastoral pleasures, it is not 
safe, apparently, to venture forth without one's 
guide-book and an exceedingly alert imagination. 

Our memory and our imagination served us 
admirably that afternoon in establishing the date 
and the history of this beautiful crumbling pile of 
buildings. We knew the ruins could be none 
other than those of Wolversy Castle, formerly the 
great and splendid Bishop's Palace. It was de- 
molished in the time of the civil war, and never 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 177 

entirely rebuilt, the bishops having taken refuge 
in Farnham Castle, Surrey, which latter seat has 
since been the Bishop's Palace. Nothing more 
admirable could be conceived than the taste of 
the Commonwealth troopers in making such a su- 
perb collection of ruins just here. The river, the 
surrounding green fields, the tender protecting 
foliage, and the delightful grouping made by the 
crumbling castle in the foreground, with the little 
modernized perpendicular chapel, and beyond, the 
square mass of the cathedral tower, made as com- 
plete a picturesque ensemble as the most fastidious 
tourist's eye could desire. Even Henri de Blois, 
who built the great Bishop's Castle, would have 
forgiven his iconoclastic countrymen who destroyed 
it, if he could but have seen how charming a pic- 
ture it made under the soft haze of that August 
afternoon. Unquestionably the bishops made the 
best builders ; but Cromwell's troops made the 
best ruin-makers, and I am not quite sure that, 
in the end, the ruins of a country do not become 
even more famous than its buildings. A ruin is 
an appeal to the least gifted, architecturally, to do 
a little building on their own account. 

With the ruins our discoveries had not come 
12 



178 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

to an end. Just beyond tlicm, a fine sqnare tower 
amid a mass of foliage began to grow nearer and 
nearer. It grew also more beautiful. A few steps 
farther on, and we saw that it was attached to a 
massive old Norman church. A long high wall 
seemed to shut it off from the surrounding fields 
and the cluster of houses immediately about us. 
Soon we discovered a fine arched gateway, of re- 
markable beauty, w^ith a square octagonal turret, 
which we had no hesitation in approaching, since 
the door stood invitingly open. Having passed 
within the portal, we found ourselves in a small 
quadrangle, whence issued a porter with a black 
hat and a demand for sixpence apiece. To our 
inquiries as to where we were to go, after having 
crossed his hand with the required- stipend, lie 
waved us toAvards another gateway. Here we 
stepped into a larger quadrangle, within wliose 
broad space was a group of wonderful buildings. 
Directly in front was the church, whose tower 
had led us hither. At the right a row of the 
quaintest, primmest, whitest, neatest little houses 
formed two sides of the angle of the bright green 
square of grass-plot that made a dazzling spot of 
brightness in the midst of the open court. In 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 179 

front of each house was a gay Httle garden, and up 
I the facade of each house-f I'ont ran a tall straight 
chimney. It was so entirely obvious that there 
being just so many chimneys, so many gardens, 
and so many little houses concealed some intention 
in the mind of the builder and designer, that I 
proceeded at once to count them. There were just 
thirteen. 

" I know what this place is," I cried in the de- 
light of my discovery. " It is St. Cross. Those 
are the thirteen houses of the thirteen old brethren, 
and this is their church ; and — and there comes 
one of the old men out to meet us." For a gray- 
haired upright old gentleman had appeared all at 
once in one of the doorways of the little houses. 
He wore a black gown with a silver cross on his 
breast, and that we both knew to be the dress of 
the St. Cross Brethren. 

We had been reading only the day before of this 
beautiful old charity, one of the oldest and most 
famed in England, — how that Henri de Blois, in 
the midst of his fighting and palace-building, had 
found time to think of the poor and the aged. He 
founded St. Cross, in 1136, as a hospital, designed 
as a retreat for thirteen old men who were unable 



180 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

to furnish means for their own support. There 
were to be also daily doles for many who resided 
outside the establishment. Under Cardinal Beau- 
fort, it was made more of a conventual establish- 
ment. This great churchman changed its name to 
" The Almshouse of Noble Poverty," and added 
priors, nuns, and brethren. During the troublous - 
period of the Middle Ages, St. Cross was enabled 
to keep its endowments, although many abuses 
crept in. Its original purpose has gradually been 
restored, however, and now it is admirably admin- 
istered by trustees, the former number of thirteen ; 
inmates and the " Wayfarer's Dole " being retained 
in virtue of its founder's original intention. Tlie 
brethren come from all parts of the kingdom, the 
only eligibility being their inability to earn their 
own livelihood. 

" It is as well, assuredly, that the number i% 
limited to thirteen. If inability to earn one's own 
livelihood be the only test, the hospital would other- 
wise be as crowded as a Roman amphitheatre. 
1 know a good many who would be eligible. I am 
not sure that I myself would be above submitting 
my failures to the test, if I could end my days in 
such a retreat," said Boston, as w^e had strolled out 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 181 

to meet the little old gentleman who was coming 
towards us. 

The place did, indeed, breathe the most tranquil, 
peaceful, unworldly calm. It was so still that our 
footfalls on the gravel walk made resounding 
echoes. It was so neat, so bright, so exquisitely 
dainty, with its clipped lawns and trim gardens 
and spotless houses, that one became insensibly 
possessed with the longing to become a part of 
the ■ noiseless, spotless purity. 

We had been joined by our old gentleman, 
who asked us, as he gave us a beautiful old-fash- 
ioned bow, adorned with the cheeriest smile, if we 
wished to be shown about. He preceded us, after 
our reply in the affirmative, with so brisk and firm 
a step that, in spite of his silver hair, we classed 
him as among the younger members of the little 
fraternity. He was beautifully erect, with such a 
rich blue tinting his eye as bespoke the vigor of 
his health. His whole personality diffused an air 
of singular simplicity and contentment, such as 
only cloistered seclusion appears to breed. 

Convents and institutions create a distinct type 
of face. It is the face of those who live untouched 
by the worry of the world and remote from its 



182 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

activities. It was such a face as this that this 
Brother had. It was serenely cahii, with a child- 
like simplicity and credidity. What he had been 
when he was an actor in his little world's drama, 
it would have been impossible to conjecture. 
Neither his troubles nor his disappointments, had 
he ever had either, had left their mark on him. 
Even the memory of his past appeared to have 
been left behind with his relation to it. Now he 
was only a Brother, — one of the little family who 
receive their daily bread from the hand of charity, 
and who, in taking it, have parted forever from the 
outer world, from its battles and its contests. 

His pride in the fine old buildings was beautiful 
to see. It was with an air of most satisfied pro- 
prietorship that he pointed out the chief architectu- 
ral features in the charming group of quaint and 
rare structures that fronted on the two quadran- 
gles, — the church on the left, the cloisters leading 
from it to the gatehouse above the former nuns' 
old chambers, the kneeling figure of the cardinal 
above the gate-arch, and the charming background 
made by the great trees beyond in the open fields. 
Later he led us into the fine old hall Avhich con- 
tains the offices, the old kitchen, and dining-hall. 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 183 

His pride was tempered by the cheeriest good- 
Jiiimor and a certain boyish light-hearted gayety. 
A little fountain of inward merriment appeared to 
be perpetually playing within. It leaped out in his 
kindly old eyes, and curved the sweet wrinkled 
corners of his fine old mouth. He grew merry, 
indeed, as he was showing us the old kitchen, its 
grand roasting-apparatus, the huge spits, and the 
quaint old ovens. To our inquiries as to whether 
cooking was still carried on here, he gave a gay 
little laugh as he answered, — 

" Oh yes, indeed, ma'am, there is cookin' still done 
here. We have hot joints four times a week ; an" 
on those big spits there 's still whole sheep roasted 
on our gaudy days, as we call them." 

" On gaudy days ? " I asked, a little wonderingly. 
• " Yes, on festivals, ma'am, on holidays an' the 
like, — on Whitsuntide, Michaelmas, Easter Sunday, 
and other great days ; these are our gaudy days. 
Then we eats the sheep, all together, the whole 
thirteen on us, over yonder in the old dining-room, 
just to keep up the good old customs." 

The dining-room, which we entered a moment 
later, retains with a startling degree of preserva- 
tion its medieval character. The high-pitched 



184 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

timber roof, the minstrels' gallery, the upright 
little stairway leading to the muniment room over- 
head, even the black jacks and the quaint tall and 
narrow tables, remain to impart to this beautiful 
old room the most completely fourteenth-century 
air conceivable. In the centre of the room the 
primitive brick fireplace is preserved, with its iron 
railing. The brethren still make a fire here on 
those famous " gaudy days," of a kind of pre- 
pared wood, instead of those great logs that for- 
merly burned there, that blackened the room 
"with their smoke, and turned the rafters to the 
deep hue which still makes their shadows so rich 
overhead. Even now it must be a goodly sight to 
see the thirteen gathered here, even about a nine- 
teenth-century compromise of an open hre. But 
the picturesque still lies in the dimmer perspec- 
tives of the past, when a group of minstrels over- 
head, in buff jerkin and leathern breeches, breathed 
music out of their horns and quavering flutes ; w^hen 
the old gentlemen sat at the deal tables yonder, 
while a rude stone lamp, such as are shown us in 
the cases now, and the great fire blazing away on 
the bricks, filling the air with the sweet perfume 
of burning wood, made the flaring flickering light ; 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 185 

when the great and heavy leathern jacks — the 
beer jngs — were passed from one shaking old hand 
to another ; and as the fiddlers took up the jig 
measure, one can fancy the feeble, cheery old song 
that broke forth as the little company of jolly old 
brethren filled their glasses anew and drank to 
the health of the oldest. 

The guide-books and the reference-books on 
architecture will tell you that the church of St. 
Cross is one of the most interesting of the style 
known as the transition-Norman, although it also 
possesses several Early English and Decorated 
features of unusual beauty and distinction. The 
first impression is certainly less Norman in charac- 
ter than early Gothic ; for the nave, which dates 
from the twelfth century, with its remarkably 
massive columns and heavy pointed archings, 
belongs among the most admirable specimens of 
Early English work. Tlie choir is a superb ex- 
ample of transition-Norman, with exquisite zigzag- 
mouldings, and is furtlier enriched now by the 
polychrome decorations which were intrusted to 
Mr. Butterfield. This decoration is as exact a 
reproduction of the old work (all church interi- 
ors being profusely decorated and colored by the 



186 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

mediaeval architects) as it was possible to make 
it. Some faint bits of the older work are still to 
be traced over one or two of the arches and along 
the mouldings. The new painting certainly results 
in producing very brilliant and rich effects. At 
the first, indeed, one is impressed with the sense 
that it is all a little too brilliant, the strong colors 
interfering with the effect of the simple massive 
richness of the architectural details. Cela saute 
aux yeux., so to speak. Doubtless time will soften 
these rather too intense purples, reds, and blues, 
and fuse their now somewhat obtrusive garish- 
ness into a more complete harmony Avitli the 
architectural ensemble. 

With an air of its being a personal grievance, 
our conductor pointed to the vacancies left in the 
floor and on the walls by the stolen brasses, and 
also referred in a melancholy tone to the fact that 
all the glass was modern. While the nineteenth 
century cannot hope satisfactorily to replace the 
beautiful old brass-work, the fine memorial win- 
dows in this perfect little church prove that the 
old art of glass-malving is not Avholly a lost one. 
They were 's-ery beautiful in color, and equally 
strong in design. 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 187 

We liad gone to the rear of the church to look 
out upon the fields and the noble trees. As we 
stood for a moment, our eyes resting on the tran- 
quil rich pasture-lands, and the admirable group- 
ing of the buildings behind us defined against the 
sky-line, a man crossed the lawn within the quad- 
rangle. It was a beggar with a pack on his back. 
He was turning towards the porter's lodge. 

" Is he going for the dole ? " Boston asked our 
little old gentleman, who was placidly eying him 
out of the corner of his kindly blue eye. 

" Oh yes, sir, that 's what he 's come for." 

" Are they always the same beggars, the same 
wayfarers ; or are they sometimes genuine ? " 

" Well, sir," the brother replied, with a little rip- 
ple of laughter, " some does come every day in the 
summer-times ; but for the most part it 's poor 
men going along the road who stops for the beer 
and the bread. Many of them comes a long ways 
out of their road to get it ; it 's known, you know, 
sir, ^nd my good lady, all over the kingdom." 

In his character of wayfarer, Boston concluded 
that he also must test the quality of the hospital 
beer. He declared it excellent, and avowed him- 
self quite ready for a second glass. The porter 



188 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

and the brother both laughed, the former saying 
that even the Prince of Wales himself could not be 
given double measure. The porter further hastened 
to assure Boston that that particular mug was the 
one from which his Royal Highness had drunk on 
his recent visit to the hospital ; at which excellent 
invention the old brother kept an unmoved face. 

A few seconds later he had bloomed into his 
habitual wreath of smiles, as he bade us farewell, 
when Boston had left a bit of shining silver in his 
pink old hand. He stood, hat in hand, under the 
great archway, bowing us out, his black gown mak- 
ing a dark mass of color against the bit of sky that 
was framed in the arch. His kindly, smiling old 
face seemed the epitome of the content, the peace, 
and the calm that make this hospital one's ideal 
of a home for sheltered old age. 

" Wliat a place for them to do their dying in ! " 

" Has n't it seemed to you as if we had strayed 
into a little paradise of noiseless, restful calm ? 
It's like a bit out of some other planet, before 
worry or dust or nerves were invented." 

" Or dying, you might add ; for it appears they 
live forever. Tlie porter told me that very few die 
before reaching the nineties. One of them, who is 



A COLLEGE AND AN ALMSHOUSE. 189 

still alive, has been here over forty years, and as 
yet gives no hint of dying." 

" Why shonld he ? I would n't if I were he. I 
presume if none of us ever did anything in particu- 
lar except to make a business of growing as old as 
possible, we should no doubt find it beset with diffi- 
culty. It is n't so easy as one thinks to die just 
when it is expected one should." 

" Well, it appears these old gentlemen sm^mount 
the difficulty by dying as infrequently as possible. 
And now which way home ? " 

" By the river, by all means, and then we can 
face the city and the sunset." 

We journeyed towards a golden city, through 
golden fields, under a golden tinted sky. Even 
the river had changed to a rich amber. Each blade 
of grass in the dying sunlight looked like a golden 
dagger freshly unsheathed, and the trees appeared 
to have absorbed the tinted light into their re- 
motest depths of shade. No hour, I think, reveals 
the splendid luxuriance and perfection of English 
foliage and verdure as does the short — the all too 
short — golden sunset, which, like a torch, lights up 
for one brilliant glorious moment into fullest splen- 
dor the riches of Eno-lish efflorescence. 



190 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER IX. 

HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 

T T was on tlie afternoon of the following day that 
Ballad trotted up the steep hill of High Street 
at a brisk speed, passed under the great gatewaj^, 
and hurried us away from the beautiful old city. 
Of the three, Ballad was the only one who carried 
a light heart and a merry spirit out of the city. 
Evidently the Winchester oats had been of an ex- 
cellent quality. Both Boston and I were under 
the influence of so poignant a regret that only the 
importance of a mail which had been telegraphed 
to meet us at Salisbury on the following morning 
could have had the power to force this decision 
of leaving on us. Soon, however, the fresh sweet 
air, the stretch of wide horizons, and the sense of 
that quickened, more vivid life which the excite- 
ment of going forth to meet new scenes awakens, 
stirred our pulses into more responsive pleasure. 
If one is forced to leave a city which one has 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 191 

cr>wn to love, to be able to view it again and again 
iV 1111 some commanding height tempers at least 
the poignancy of the parting. It is like the sweet- 
ened grief of holding a dear face between one's 
palms and scanning each feature anew before the 
wrench comes. Winchester, as we rose along the 
crest of the hill behind the city, appeared to 
us this last half-hour in a series of dissolving 
views. As the hills grew steeper, the proportions 
of the wonderful old city seemed to shi'ink away, 
leaving only its nobler and more stupendous feat- 
ures to rise into a worthy rivalship with the en- 
compassing hills. The huge, uplifted mass of the 
cathedral, as we looked down upon it through a 
green valley of curving fields, seemed not unlike 
some mountain in stone carved by those master 
architects, the storm and the tempest. The houses 
near it were dwarfed to the proportion of huts. 
It was a prospect that led us to reflect that such 
indeed had b.een, in the disproportionate mediaeval 
days, the true relation existing between the Church 
and the world, when the former looked down upon 
mortals only in the light of so much material for 
the furnishing of the necessary pence with which 
to rear its temple of holy scorn. 



192 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Ballad, not being given to philosophic reflections, 
took a much less sentimental view of the hills. 
They were, in truth, seemingly unending. It had 
been one long continuous climb from the courtyard 
of the " White Swan " up to this breezy eminence, 
at least two miles distant from the city gateway. 
Among the admirable qualities which we had 
grown to admire in Ballad was his talent for 
remembering a promise. They were, it is true, 
always promises which, in moments of weakness, 
we had made to him. But his tenacious memory 
of the same pleased us, as proving the extent and 
variety of his capacities. It was in virtue of a 
covenant we had entered into along some of the 
longer Fareham hills, to the effect that we should 
walk up the longest and the steepest ascents, that 
now, with tlie most confiding faith in our honor, 
he appealed to us to redeem those pledges. He 
stopped again and again, turning his deep brown 
glance backward upon us, speaking, as only dumb 
brutes can, with mute but eloquent entreaty. I, 
for one, could resist no longer. 

Boston soon joined me along the roadside, 
swinging himself out of the Ioav box-seat. But 
Ballad's demands did not cease with having merely 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 193 

' forced us to lighten his load. He possessed those 
' refinements of taste which characterize every true 
walker. First of all, he loved companionship. He 
i loved best to have one of ns on either side, so 
. close that the tip of his forehead or his long nose 
touched our elbow as he plodded along. Neither 
I was he adverse to more caressive advances, when 
■ either one of us, with an arm about his glossy 
; neck, would the better keep pace with his long 
swinging gait. If we stopped to examine the land- 
scape, he improved the moment to test the quality 
I of the roadside grass. But ha was rather a gour- 
; met than a gourmand ; one succulent taste of the 
good roadside fare appeared to satisfy his delicate 
I but fastidious palate. The length of such a meal 
1 was the most flattering proof we needed to assure 
us of the richness of the soil. 

It was in such amity of friendly companions] lip 
that we all three toiled up the steep Winchester 
! hills. Once at the top, however, of the steepest, 
and the splendid prospect made us stay our steps. 
Far as the eye could reach the country stretched 
itself out like an unrolled carpet at our feet. Hills 
dipped into valleys only to rise again into hills, till 
they and the far edges of the horizon were merged 

13 



194 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

into one indistinguishable blue. There were sev- 
eral miles of driving with this great prospect be- 
fore us, changing in some of the nearer details, 
but the vast panoramic aspect remaining the same. 
The county of Hampshire appeared to lie beneath 
and out beyond us, as if, like some conscious 
beauty, she were bent on displaying her charms on 
this last day of our drive among her hills. 
[ Hampshire is liilly, as Sussex is rolling. She is 
a wild beauty, with a touch of unkempt disordered 
loveliness about her, strange enough to find among 
these Southern counties. Our journey throiigli tlie 
heart of her forest and in among her rude hillside- 
villages was a rcAclation of the store of surprises 
reserved for those who seek them out in this com- 
pact and wonderful little island.. Here was a bit 
of country almost as wild as some parts of our own 
transatlantic continent. Instead of the park-like 
meadows of the Surrey downs, their trim gar- 
den finish, their sleek parterre perfections, these 
hills and fields had a touch of nature's more 
abandoned freedom. The trees were true moun- 
taineers, growing on perilous heights or where 
best it pleased them, that they might prove their 
hardiliood in facing the elements. 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 195 

Of course, wild as was tlie aspect of the country, 
there were still hedge-rows, or it would not have 
been England. A roadway without hedge-rows, 
from an Englishman's point of view, is only con- 
ceivable in a country whose government is either 
unconstitutional or in sad want of political repair. 

These upland Hampshire hedges were quite 
unobjectionable. They were charming in their 
reckless disorder. They strewed the grassy road- 
side, in their gay abandonment, with the loose 
petals of the wild white rose and the honeysuckle. 
Their dense shade was the home of the robin. We 
startled one of these crimson-liveried gentlemen as 
we leaned over the top of a particularly odorous 
hedge to catch a glimpse of a little old farmhouse 
perched on the edge of a tiny precipice. We star- 
tled the robin, but we had very little effect on the 
musician. He had begun his song amid the honey- 
suckle. Finding himself in good voice, he contin- 
ued his roulades, when we came to disturb his 
serenade to their perfume. A shower of thrilling 
notes descended as he whirled himself into the 
upper skies. It was the revenge of the musician 
in showing us how easily he could wing himself 
into aerial spheres. 



196 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

His song accentuated the stillness, the ahso- 
lute quiet, and the forest-like remoteness. There 
was not a sound except the nibbling of Ballad in 
among the grasses, those now sky-distant robin- 
notes, and the crackling amid the trees made by 
unseen insects or squirrels. It was such a mo- 
ment as lingers aftervv^ard in the memory with 
the resonance of a full rich chord. 

In the midst of the hills was an ideal little 
rustic. We had been driving for several miles 
without having seen even so remote a sign of 
civilization as a distant church-spire. But at the 
bottom of a series of hills we drove straight into a 
little village which might have posed as the nymph 
of the woodlands. It was Hursley, a village with 
as wild a grace as the roses which covered its 
gabled and thatched old houses. Almost at the 
entrance of its wide straggling little street was set 
a beautiful ivy-grown church. Its round Saxon- 
headed windows told its age and history. Our 
guide-book had already furnished us with the se- 
cret which explained its admirable and perfect 
state of preservation. The pious John Keble was 
vicar here for many years, and generpusly gave the 
money derived from the " Christian Year " for its 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 197 

restoration. There were some admirable brass tab- 
lets to be seen in the church, erected to the memory 
of his wife and himself, as Avell as an interesting 
monument to Richard Cromwell. But we did not 
stop to enter, as tlie congregation were just about 
dispersing; for it was Sunday, the first of our 
drives on that day. 

No time could have been chosen to see this 
bit of English rustic life to better advantage. 
The little congregation, as it came slowly forth in 
groups of twos and threes from beneath the low 
church portal, stood about on the green, or wan- 
dered quietly up tlie village street into the open 
doors of the thatched vine-covered houses. It was 
strange to see the attempts at London fashions in 
the women's dressing as tlic}^ walked along the 
little rural street; they were the London fashions 
of several seasons ago, so that their modernness 
was not too startling. The men had the look of 
discomfort and awkwardness common to the sex 
when wearing their Sunday broadcloth ; some of 
the older farmers, however, wore their corduroys 
and faded pink and yellow vests and great neckties, 
in defiance of the modern modes. In spite of the 
freshness and fairness of the younger women, it 



198 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Avas these latter — these fine, vigorous, sunburnt, 
last-century faces among the old farmers — who 
bore off the palm of beauty. Some among tliera 
■were superb types of English strength of build 
and sturdy mould of feature. There was hardly 
a weak face among them. But strong and robust 
as was their general aspect, these farmers had a 
look peculiar, I think, to an English farmer. It 
was the look of mingled simplicity, honesty, and 
peacefulness, which no French, German, or Ameri- 
can agriculturist ever successfully combines. It 
is such an expression as can only come from long 
descent and heredity, — from men who for gen- 
erations have lived on the same soil, have thought 
the same thoughts, have had the same simple 
ambitions, and yet whose intelligence has been of 
an order which enabled them to take an active 
personal interest in their contemporaneous political 
surroundings. The French farmer, if he be intelli- 
gent, is too shrewd to be simple ; the German is 
too stolid to be intelligent ; it is only the English 
yeomanry who are at once industrious, intelligent, 
and still rurally simple. 

The younger men, we noticed, accompanied their 
wives to the cottage or the farmhouse doors. Thev 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 199 

picked up a child or two who had run out to meet 
them to joy in the unwonted Sunday delight of in- 
dulging in the happiness of a father and the sport 
of being trundled by strong arms. But the older 
men passed on farther down the street, with a 
group of younger lads, embryonic young men, at 
their heels. These turned with simultaneous ac- 
cord into a little tavern at the farthest extremity 
of the village, — as far as possible from the church 
at the other end, and the omniscience of the vicar's 
eye, we said to each other. They took their seats 
about the long narrow tables in the little inn. The 
orders for the evening toddy were given audibly 
enough for us to hear as we stood without in the 
courtyard ; for Ballad had not been proof against 
this example of profane Sabbath-breaking. He 
had walked deliberately up to the village trough, 
and had drained its contents. It was presumably, 
also, purely in the interests of his character as a 
student of rustic habits and customs, that Boston 
was suddenly inspired to swing himself off the box- 
seat, and to declare that he was consumed with the 
prevailing thirst. The noise within the little tav- 
ern stopped for a brief moment as he stepped into 
the low room ; but the strong rough voices broke 



200 



CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



out again a moment later. Only seven of the tap- 
sters followed Boston to the door to look inquisi- 
tively at our trap. Ballad was evidently an un- 
known acquaintance, although each farmer did his 
best to identify him. 

" 'Ee 's frame Winchester, I tell 'ee." 

" Naw, 'ee's naw frame Winchester ; 'ee 's frame 
deown yander, frame Salisbury." 

"Naw, mon, 'ee's cum naw so fur; 'ee's frame 
Winchester." 

" You 're all wrong, — all of you ; he 's from Chi- 
chester," I called back at them, as we drove off with 
a dash. It was sport to see them scatter like af- 
frighted geese, and fun to hear the mocking laugh- 
ter of the men within, which greeted the astonished 
questioners as they ran back into the inner tap-room. 

The discovery of two or three lawn gowns and 
smart bonnets, each attended by a village swain, 
in among the adjacent fields and woods, was proof 
that not all the Hursley males were left behind in 
the tap-room. These more sentimental villagers 
were employing this classical courting-hour in the 
useful purpose of inducing their lady-loves, doubt- 
less, to be the presiding rustic divinities of their 
hearts and homes. These, once safely insured. 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 201 

could then comfortably be left for the tavern. It 
• is a law of sequence not wholly unpractised among 
what we are pleased to call the upper classes. 

The road to Romsey, the little town where we 
were to sup and rest ere we pressed on to Salis- 
bury, was almost as picturesquely wild as that part 
of it which had led us to Hursley. The prospect 
was, however, not nearly so large and open. The 
dense shade of the woodlands made the views of 
the outlying country less frequent. The breaks 
in the thick foliage only served to make such 
glimpses the more interesting and admirable. 

There were five miles more of delightful driving 
through the woods, past the hedges and the quiet 
grassy slopes, and we were rattling over the cobble- 
paved streets of Romsey. 

We count Romsey as among the discoveries of 
our trip. We had only been told so much of the 
charms of the little town as that it contained an 
excellent inn where we could break our fast, and 
that near it was Lord Palmerston's beautiful seat 
of Broadlands. But it is due to neither of these 
attractions that Romsey remains to us among tlie 
most perfect and complete of the little towns we 
encountered on this charming tour. 



202 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

The pearl of our discovery lay in the fact that 
Romsey boasts of an abbey, which from its beauty 
and its unique architectural features should be 
counted as among the chief architectural Mec- 
cas of all lovers of fine and rare old Norman 
work. We classed ourselves amongst such lovers ; 
yet it was only by a happy accident that we 
made the discovery of Romsey Abbey's surpassing 
beauties. 

We owe our seeing it at all to the landlady of 
the " Deer Hound." She had stepped out to greet 
us as we drove in under her cosey little brick court- 
yard. After greeting us with a courtesy which was 
almost formidable in its ceremoniousness, owing to 
the emphasis of her large and somewliat obese per- 
son, she ordered the hostler to unstrap the luggage. 
We protested, explaiuing that we had stopped only 
for supper and to water our horse. Had I foreseen 
how keen her disappointment would be, I fear I 
should have weakly yielded and have stopped over 
night ; but she rallied almost instautly. 

"Ho, very well, sir, we'll try to make 3'ou has 
comfortable has possible, halthough most hevery 
one stops, has they hall goes to see the habbey. 
You '11 go to see hit, sir ; hit 's the finest church 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 203 

in Hinglaiid, han' hi '11 make the lady a nice cup 
liof tea while the gentleman steps hover and rings 
for the vherger ; he 's hopposite, han' '11 show you 
heverythink." 

Her garrulousness was too good-natured to be 
resented, although a trifle overpowering. Boston 
broke the torrent of her talk by retreating under 
cover of an excuse for looking after Ballad ; but 
he did not escape without binding himself to look 
up the verger. She then preceded me up a creak- 
ing winding flight of Avorn steps, leading me into a 
large upper room evidently used as the inn coffee- 
room. She lost not a moment in placing me in a 
chair, in pouring the water into the kettle, in giv- 
ing a multitude of orders to a sweet, fresh-looking 
country-girl who obeyed them in silence, all the 
while continuing one of the longest, most endless, 
wandering, and inconsequent monologues it has 
ever been my punishment as a listener to endure. 
Yet she was well versed in the history of her native 
town, and she gave me a not uninteresting though 
somewhat discursive synopsis of its existence. 

The tea equalled her promise of its excellence. 
I sat and sipped it as the stream of her talk poured 
on. The room was flne and large, with rich old 



204 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

mahogany cupboards and buffets, high straight- 
backed chairs, and a mantelpiece with some lovely 
old Tudor carvings. Its ample proportions and air 
of prosperous antiquity matched well with the 
appearance of its owner, w^hose generous outlines, 
dimpled rosy cheeks, and glittering gold chain bore 
evidence to the successful business done at the 
" Deer Hound." Her father had kept it before 
her, she said. And did I know how old the old 
house was ? Almost as old as Romsey itself, and 
the town dated back to Alfred the Great. For the 
" habbey " was built by Edward his son, as a 
convent, and the Nuns' Garden was still shown, 
and the Nuns' Door. The convent had been a rich 
one in ifs day, but all that had gone with popery, 
and now it was only tlie parish church. And we 
must look in the choir for the tombs and monu- 
ments of the Saint Barbes, the original owners of 
Broadlands, and for the splendid windows put up 
iu honor of the great Prime Minister, and also for 
the tomb of Sir William Petty, who had been the 
son of a Romsey clothier, but who was also the 
ancestor of the great Lansdowne family. 

" Han' you must see the cloisters, — hor rather 
where they was, for there hain't no trace hof them 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 205 

left, — ban' you must see the nun's 'air; liit's the 
beautifuUest ban' the loveliest color — Han' now 
there's your good gentleman hand the vherger, lian' 
mind you hask him for to show you the nun's 
'air." 

I joined the " good gentleman " and the verger 
at the bottom of the creaking flight of steps. We 
proceeded at once, without further delay, to thread 
our way through the streets of the silent little 
town to tlie abbey. The silence had a drowsy, 
brooding quiet in its stillness, as if centuries ago 
'there had been a lively stirring time among tlicse 
quaint sad-faced streets, and ever since the little 
town had lived on the memory of it all. Not a 
soul was astir; not a footfall save our own re- 
sounded on the clean cobl3le pavements, and no 
voices save ours broke the silence, which might 
have been under the spell of a charm, so complete 
and so profound was its slumber. 

This drowsy quiet may perhaps have served to 
enhance the effect which the striking unmodern- 
ness of the abbey produced. It needed this em- 
phasis of unreality, this suggestion of a shadowy, 
dim, and hazy remoteness, to touch us witli its 
wand of illusion, and prepare us for the surprise 



206 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

■which the strange and jet lovely structure was to 
produce. The surprise lay in the abbey being at 
once so venerable and yet in such a perfect con- 
dition of preservation. The discolorations on its 
facades, the mosses, the leaflets, and the few wild- 
flowers which had intrusted their delicate existence 
to the few inches of earth along the cornices and in 
among the window-ledges, were trustworthy proofs 
that there had been no modern renovations. Yet 
with the exception of some traces of crumbling and 
decay in the tooth work over the beautiful arched 
doorways, the fissures and the rain-stains, the ' 
grand old church must have presented the same 
appearance to its Norman builders that it did to us 
on that still, sunny August Sunday. The interior 
we found no less exquisitely beautiful. I use the 
word exquisite with deliberation of purpose, because 
no other word would so well describe the delicacy, 
the high degree of finish, and the supreme elegance 
of this wonderful interior. The style is Norman, 
but it is the Norman of that later, more refined 
period when the natural elegance and taste of the 
Norman builders had come to demand something 
more than strength from their rounded arches and 
a more ideal massiveness from their structural 




RoMSEY Abbey, Tuansept and Nave. 



Paoe 206. 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 207 

solidity. Here each archway, each string-course, 
and each cornice had been made to bloom under the 
inspired chisel into rhythmic waves of ornament, — 
tliat Avise linear restraint which preceded the mo- 
ment ^hen the poetry of tracery was to break forth 
into the efflorescence of the Gothic. 

Grace had been the guiding divinity of the archi- 
tect's inspiration, until the grandeur of the Norman 
had been transformed into something of that soar- 
ing quality of lightness we are wont to associate 
with the later Gothic. The eye wanders in enrap- 
tured ecstasy over these towering arches, up into 
the rare and original two-arched triforium, and 
down the shadowy length of the noble little nave. 
It is the most triumphant union conceivable of 
grace and strength. 

The verger was at infinite pains to explain to us 
at just what precise points in the transept, the 
choir, or the nave the Norman became transition, 
or the latter changed into early English. But it 
was the admirable harmony and beauty of the 
interior as a whole which chiefly charmed and 
interested us. There was a richly ornamented 
door opening from the southern transept, called 
the Nuns' Door, formerly used by the sisters as 



208 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

they passed to and fro into the cloisters and into 
the old gardens. Both these latter are now part 
of that shadowy time when the old interior was 
full of the white-capped, black-gowned nuns. It 
was the memory which the thought of thes^ silent 
saintly-browed women brought up to our minds, 
that served to remind us of the covenant we had 
made with our kindly and garrulous landlady. 
We proceeded at once in search of the remark- 
able hair, which the verger assured us was as 
genuine as it was ancient. 

" It's a thousand years old if it's a day, mum," 
he said, with the severe accent which is wont to 
accompany conviction ; " and it 's as perfect as any 
lady's in t\\Q land." 

He thereupon proceeded to uncover a semicir- 
cular box with a glass top. Througli the glass we 
looked down upon a bit of a wooden log, on which 
lay evidently a woman's scalp, depending from 
which was a mass of golden brownish hair, care- 
fully braided. The log, the verger explained, was 
the cushion used in those ancient times as the rude 
head-rest of the dead. The "relic" had been found 
years ago by some workmen while digging up a 
grave. It was- an interesting, but on the whole not 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 209 

I" a cheering- or inspiriting sight, although there was a 
!' certain glimmer of ghoulish fascination in watch- 
j' ing the threads of gold, which the stray sunshine 
P' lit up these hundreds of years after the owner 
^ of those fair locks had crumbled into nothing- 
ness. It was a relief to turn away to the beautiful 
■ lancet windows put up in memory of Palmcrston, 
and even the tomb of the Romsey clothier seemed 
to make death and decay more decently remote 
and unreal. 

The landlady, however, was trouWed by no such 
dismal sentimentalities. Her first question, as she 
stood awaiting us on the doorstep, was whether or 
not we had seen " hit." On assuring her that we 
had, she added with cheery blitheness : " Beautiful 
specimen his n't hit, han' such a lovely color has hit 
was ; there was no dye about that, was there, ban' 
so neat as she was," — in full confidence, apparently, 
that it had been the custom of the dead of old to do 
their own hair-dressing. 

Half an hour later, after supper, we clattered 
out of her hospitable courtyard. Her farewell 
speeches pursued us down the street. But the 
town was evidently familiar with the sound of her 

strong voice ; for although it started a number of 

14 



210 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

slumbering echoes under the old doorways, it ap- 
peared to arouse no fellow-townsman's interest. 

Our glimpse of Broadlands came just after we 
had crossed the clear little river Test, over which 
sprang a pretty two-arched bridge. A rise on the 
hill just outside the little town gave us a command- 
ing prospect of the great premier's former seat and 
of the adjoining lands of the estate. The house 
stood in the midst of emerald lawns which swept, 
by a series of gentle declivities, down to the 
river-banks. There was a- dim vast perspective 
beyond, of meadows, trees, and bushy banks. In 
the immediate foreground some fine cows were 
standing in the clear stream up to their middle, 
making, with the noble colonnaded facade of the 
dignified and somewhat severe-looking stone man- 
sion, with the turf and the great trees, an imme- 
morial picture of tranquil and yet stately beauty. 
It was a prospect which fulfilled one's ideal of the 
perfect blending of the pastoral and the majestic. 
Such a grouping as Broadlands made, with the 
rustic charms of the old town, the mediaeval sanc- 
tity of association clustering in the tightly-knit 
Norman abbey structure, and that note of rural 
loveliness struck by the meadows and the river, 



\ 



-A: 



, # 



iiiUMA^t'li 



*T 







.^ 



o 

o 
o 
Q 



nURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 211 

was such as completes one's ideal vision of a fine 
old English seat. No spot could be imagined more 
conducive to repose, from a weary statesman's point 
of view ; and no surroundings would be more certain 
to awaken and to stir anew the fire of an ambitious 
devotion to one's country, to its interests and its 
welfare. It is ever the homely sights and sounds 
of nature which tend to nourish best the clinging 
tendrils of affection, and stir the profoundest chords 
of a vibrating patriotism. 

It appeared as if it was destined, on this par- 
ticular afternoon, that we should have vouchsafed 
for us a very complete series of revelations, — of 
the sources, for instance, whence spring English 
love of, and English delight in, her rural land- 
scape. From Romsey to Salisbury our road led 
us into what must have been the very heart of 
England's richest and most vernal loveliness. The 
wildness of the Hampshire hills had become tamed 
into the gentleness of pretty, approachable undula- 
tions. The verdure was greener with the thick- 
ness of sweet grasses ; the trees were fuller and 
taller, like all beings who have plenty of space 
and light in which to grow. The roads and 
lanes were such as the poets have sung since 



212 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims took their pleasure 
along them. 

Imagine a road lined as with velvet, with broad 
grassy strips growing into a maze of flowering 
hedge-rows : overhead an unbroken arch of. elm, 
under whose cool green aisles we drove and con- 
tinued to drive for miles. As the road dipped and 
rose, we caught glimpses of hills distant as the 
horizon, with gleams below of ponds and pools, 
the liquid eyes of this fair-featured landscape. 
The houses, thatched and vine-covered, and the 
larger farmhouses made brilliant flowery little 
groups in the vernal picture. Children whose 
cheeks were redder than the pinks ran out to peer 
at us from the rustic gateways ; women and girls 
with bright kerchiefs were busy milking in tbe 
barnyards ; and men, with serious Sunday as- 
pect, in their shirt-sleeves were solemnly leaning 
over the fence-rails surveying them, their pigs, and 
their sheep, true to the farmer's habit, the world 
over, whose rest is always consecrated to doing 
suras in arithmetic over his cattle and his lands. 

This was the England we all know and have 
learned to love since we were old enough to love 
any land or nation ; whose greatness has always 



HURSLEY AND ROMSEY ABBEY. 213 

been allied to a certain grave simplicity, whose 
best poets have sung the natural jovs of rural life, 
and whose heroes' passion and fire have ever been 
tempered by the taste for temperance and justice. 
It is from English soil that have sprung the true 
sources of English strength and greatness, — from 
that healthful fountain of her rural life and her 
rural loveliness, which, like the eternal springs 
that flow around Hymettus, are immortally fresh 
and life-giving. 



214 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER X. 

SALISBURY. 

'T^HERE is a peculiar charm, in an unknown 
country, in watching the daily miracle of day 
giving way to night. Twilight invests all land- 
scape with a fresh meaning. English landscape 
particularly gains hy the transformation of this 
hour of mysterious charm. Details are lost in the 
twilight blur ; they are merged or obliterated by 
the long finger of the deepening shadows ; outlines 
etch their indistinctness against the sky, and the 
landscape can be but dimly divined through the 
dense masses of shade. 

It was through the rich gloom of such an hour 
that as we skirted the crown of a steep hill we 
looked down upon an outstretch of country, not yet 
so lost in the dusk of the night that we could not 
distinguish the arrowy flight into the sky of the 
great Salisbury cathedral spire. Only the noble 
outline of iha encompassing liills, the foliage massed 



SALISBURY. 215 

in the valleys, through which the light of the scat- 
tered villages glittered like tangled fireflies, and 
that upshooting tapering spire, could be seen in 
the thick richness of the coming night. 

Our road into Salisbury led us from the brighter 
light on the hill into the darkness of the valley. 
The villages were in shadow. Even the lights 
were out in the little cottages and taverns. Not a 
tapster seemed astir. The hush of an early Sab- 
bath sleep appeared to pervade each one of the 
hamlets we passed. 

Salisbury, we found, was by no means such a 
rustic as her country neighbors. On entering its 
thickly built streets the lights were ablaze on the 
street corners. The taverns, apparently, were still 
doing a lively business. There were any number 
of friendly vagrants, with no other ostensible occu- 
pation, an hour before midnight, than to continue 
the day's work of diligently keeping their hands in 
their pockets, readily willing to show us our way 
to the " White Hart " inn. A formidably realistic 
figure of that anomalous member of the animal 
kingdom, surmounting a portico which projected 
over the sidewalk, proved that our idle guides had 
dealt fairly with us. 



216 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

We were received with that air of unmoved cahn 
and that appearance of impassive interest charac- 
teristic of good English inn-manners. Our coming 
at nearly midnight from nowhere in particular, 
with a horse that gave every evidence of having 
found the way long, — ourselves and luggage cov- 
ered with dust, proving the length of our journey 
no fable, — appeared to arouse no more concern 
or curiosity tlian if we had come at midday by 
train. 

" Do you really suppose it is genuine, this indif- 
ference, or is it put on ? " I queried of Boston, when 
the last dusty bag had been deposited in the pleas- 
ant lamp-lit sitting-room. 

" My dear, human nature is n't as varied as it 
might be ; it has a way of repeating its types. I 
presume curiosity in Salisbury is as lively and ac- 
tive a faculty as curiosity in a New England town ; 
only, in England it has learned the good manners 
of repressing itself." 

" There 's something deeper in it than that, I 
think ; it 's the reticence which rank imposes upon 
its inferiors. Fancy a peasant asking a lord where 
he has come from, and imagine a Yankee re- 
fraining because of any such reason. But here 's 



SALISBURY. 217 

supper, and it looks as good as their manners are 
perfect." 

To the respectful attention of the waiter who 
served us, was added, we discovered, another quality 
of excellence. It was that of thoughtful consider- 
ateness. The discretion of the man's silence was 
suddenly broken by what appeared to be a sponta- 
neous impulse. He was on the point of withdraw- 
ing with the tray, at the end of our repast, when 
he stopped a moment at the door, turned towards 
me with a little bow, and said, — 

" I hope, ma'am, as ye won't be troubled by the 
noise in the mornin', ma'am, after your long drive, 
ma'am." 

Before we could ask a question he was gone. 

" What does that mean ? " exclaimed Boston. 

" It means that something is going to happen, — 
a procession, or a country-meeting, or it may be the 
advent of Royalty. But whatever it is I shall 
take the precaution to get my forty winks imme- 
diately." 

It was well that I did ; for before dawn the 
" noise " had begun. Our first impression on awak- 
ing was that a menagerie and a circus in combina- 
tion had been let loose. 



218 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

" The yearly tiger has broken out of his cage," 
I said conjecturally to Boston, as I went towards 
the window. 

Light hoofs ^ere striking the pavement, and the 
tread of heavy-booted men and boys. But as I 
opened the shutters, there came other sounds, — the 
pitiful bleating of lambs,- the neighing of horses, 
and the lowing of cattle ; so the circus theory had 
to be abandoned. 

Looking foi'th into the faint bluish gray of early 
dawn, I saw that the street, as far as tlie eye could 
penetrate its length either way, was filled with great 
droves of sheep and cattle. 

Teamsters were driving huge wagons and carts, 
the latter filled with calves and kids. There were 
groups of horses tethered to one another, led by 
farmers' boys riding one of the leaders bare-back. 
Many of the horses were tricked out with ribbons 
and straw trimmings in their manes and tails. 
The teamsters also wore a festival appearance, with 
gay little knots of colored ribbons fastened to their 
coats and large hats. The noise and the tumult 
were indescribable ; there was the barking of the 
shepherd dogs as tliey plunged madly after stray 
sheep, the yelling of the teamsters to one another, 



SALISBURY. 219 

the slioiiting of the boys as their horses reared or 
struggled, and, piercing through the din like some 
flageolet note of pain, was the pathetic bleating of 
the sheep and the groaning of the calves. Natu- 
rally, with such a chorus of sounds in the air, sleep 
was out of the question. Shortly before six we 
rang for breakfast. In just fifteen minutes it ap- 
peared, borne by our waiter of the night before. 
His unexampled promptness he at once proceeded 
to explain, deeming, doubtless, that a haste so con- 
trary to the provincial habit rendered some form 
of apology necessary. 

" I knowed you could n't sleep, sir, what with 
the noise and the uproar, an' so I got your break- 
fast ready in case it was ordered, sir." 

" What is it ? — what is all this noise about ? " 
" It 's the sheep-fair, sir, — the sheep, horse, and 
cattle fair, as takes place once a year." 
" Is it held here in town ? " 
" About a mile out, sir, down in the meadows. 
But the city's full, — full of tha gentry and the 
farmers come in to buy. We've been up nearly 
all night a-waitin' on 'em, sir. You ought to 
see it, sir, begging your pardon ; it 's a grand 
siti-ht." 



220 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

" See it ? I wonder what he takes us for ? " said 
Boston, with more emphasis than elegance as the 
waiter closed the door behind him. " Not go to 
a sheep-fair in England when it's at your very 
door ? As well go to Rome and not see the Pope, 
should he pass beneath your window ! " 

" I suppose, then, we '11 postpone the cathedral." 
" The cathedral, my dear, having been here 
some five hundred years, will presumably be in 
town at least till to-morrow." 

" We can't drive Ballad out ; he 's too tired." 
" We don't want him. It would be better to 
go as the rest do, — as those people are going 
now in those queer-looking traps ; don't you think 
so?" 

We were looking out of the window again. The 
droves of cattle had given place to multitudes of 
people, — to farmers, country-looking gentlemen, 
young and old, to tradesmen and their wives, — a 
motley anxious crowd, standing about on street- 
corners waiting for seats in some one of the nu- 
merous passing vehicles. But not a seat was to be 
had, apparently. Every species of cart, wagon, 
trap, and vehicle which the surrounding country 
contained had been put into requisition. Drivers 



SALISBURY. 221 

plied tlieir whips, speeding along in clouds of dust 
to the fair, returning for fresh passengers ; yet the 
crowds never seemed to thin. 

It was nearly midday before we ourselves were 
in possession of a broken-down phaeton and jaded 
horse, whose owner, at a preposterous price, con- 
sented to our occupying the vehicle, without the 
addition of the dozen or more fellow-passengers 
usually crowded into it. 

The mile, what with its dust and thronged 
thoroughfares, and the curious mixture of the 
human and animal species, we found just a mile 
too long ; but the first glimpse of the fair grounds 
made these discomforts more than endurable. 

In a wide stretch of rich meadow-land, with 
fringes of trees and bits of wood for an enceinte, 
with gently sloping hills towards the west, where 
the flags and the bunting would show well against 
the sky, lay the fair grounds. The scene, as we 
entered, was brilliant with life and movement. The 
wicker pens were packed with noble-looking sheep 
and rams, crowded together so closely that their 
backs looked like an unbroken sheep-rug. Under 
the trees, and in the open, were grouped the horses 
and cattle. Some jockeys, in brilliant tweed vests, 



222 Cathedral days. 

and farmers' boys were riding stallions and half- 
broken colts, while the mares and still younger 
colts were tethered to the tree-trunks, contentedly 
nibbling the short grass, as if a change of masters 
were among the things to be accepted with philoso- 
phy in a life of vicissitudes. 

The ceaselessly moving throngs of people filled 
the alleys between the sheep-pens, crowded about 
the auctioneers' stands, and packed the narrow 
strip allowed to spectators about the horse enclo- 
sures. The crowd had the instability of a mercu- 
rial stream ; now conjoining into groups to halloo 
and hurrah over some feet of horsemanship ; or 
dissolving like quicksilver, only to meet again at 
the improvised booths and al-fresco restaurants 
which countrywomen and gypsies had erected 
under the belt of the more distant trees. The 
scene, teaming with life and replete in contrasts, 
was set, like a picture in its frame, in the emerald 
meadows and the tender foliage ; all the outlines 
were softened and harmonized by the rich verdure. 
It was a Teniers framed in velvet. 

The dominant note in the scene was its dead 
earnestness. This was no make-believe fair, — a 
Frenchman's gala-outing or a Spaniard's /e^f, where 



SALISBURY. 223 

barter and trade were only to serve as the mask 
of revelry. This was a camp of traders bent on 
business. There appeared to be little or no loiter- 
ing- under the great trees, among the buyers, in 
wait for any chance pleasure or gayety to whicli 
tlic occasion might give rise. In trade an English- 
man is as serious as he is when at his prayers. He 
would as soon think of play as an accompaniment 
to the one as to the other. 

The absence, j)resumably, of any coarse gaye- 
ties accounted for tlie presence of so many sons 
of the Church. They were quite as safe here 
from the profane vulgarities of the world as in 
their pulpits. The curate's innocent round-eyed 
face, the rector's more worldly figure, immacu- 
late in linen, with severely cut garments, were in 
amusing contrast to the knowingly tipped nose 
of the pervasive jockey, who cracked his short 
whip and uttered a joke in the very teeth of these 
gentlemen. Among the crowd sauntered swells in 
perfection of riding-gear. Stolid-looking country 
squires and every variety of farmer were inextri- 
cably mixed in the mass of the moving, jostling 
multitude. Here and there a swarthy-skinned 
gypsy-girl, with gleaming teeth and glossy hair, 



224 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

shot through the crowd like a dartmg bit of flame, 
focussing all eyes upon her as she smiled boldly 
back. At the outskirts of the grounds some noisy 
flirtations were in full swing between some of these 
gay-kerchiefed gypsies and the plough-boys and 
farmers' lads who had been left to guard the wag- 
ons and teams. The sound of their broad coarse 
laughter was like the introduction of an opera- 
bouffe aria into the midst of a grave cantata. 

Such pleasures as the fair offered were concen- 
trated about the eating-booths. It was rather a 
solemn company of feasters, that we passed, crowd- 
ing about the little tables. The English farmer 
has never learned the art of seasoning his food 
with laughter. The cattle feeding out yonder, and 
these silent farmers who gave out a monosyllable 
or two between the beer-draining, both brought to 
their meal the same Egyptian gravity and dignity. 
One admirable little rustic scene greeted our eyes 
on our way out. It was an old barn filled willi 
long narrow tables on which was placed a profu- 
sion of coarse homely fare. Farmers and team- 
sters crowded the barrels, casks, and broken stools, 
— the only available seats. Their strong sunburnt 
faces loomed out of the dark. The steamiuo; food. 



SALISBURY. 225 

tlie coarse textures of the farmers' coats and capes, 
and the serving-women, who now raised a becr- 
juir, now planted their arms akimbo on their 
wide hips, throwing back their full strong throats, 
as they joined in tlie occasional short laughter 
that went round with the beer, made a very com- 
plete picture of rustic life and manners. 

Just outside the barn a trade was being struck. 
The buyers were two gentlemen, one of whom had 
taken off his riding-glove and had thrust his 
richly jewelled hand deep into the nearest sheep's 
thick coat. The sellers were two farmers. The 
elder was a noble-looking old man, of the last- 
century type, whose frugal savings had written 
their obvious balm of peace and content on his 
rugged unworried face. Next him stood a thin 
nervous younger farmer, whose premature lines of 
care were tell-tale proofs that American beef and 
American wheat were harder competitors to fight 
than his Georgian grandfather had found the 
American Rebels. 

There were but few words interchanged, but the 
gentlemen handled the sheep with the air of con- 
noisseurs. Finally the elder gentleman turned to 

the younger farmer, and said, — 

15 



226 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

" We '11 take them. Have them driven over 
directly, will you ? " 

The farmer nodded and whistled ; a lad appeared 
in response ; the sheep were driven out of their 
pens, and all started forward, 

" Is it a long bit ? " the lad asked of the gentle- 
men as they mounted their horses at the gate. 

" Not so very, — about eight miles or so." 

The boy grasped his stick more firmly, turned, 
made a half-moon of one hand against the side of 
his mouth, and shouted down into the hollow, — 

"Father, don't ee wait dinner; it's a long bit, 
eight mile or more. Don't ee wait." He then 
resumed the guardianship of his sheep. 

" It 's a primitive way of doing one's shopping, 
but it has the advantage of appearing to insure 
speed and an honest delivery of the goods," said 
Boston, as we proceeded leisurely to follow the 
sheep and the two men, but at a distance, because 
of the dust raised by the sheep in the open road- 
way. 

A short drive soon took us into the heart of 
the city. The streets, as we drove back, seemed 
strangely still and deserted. All the stir of life 
had evidently localized itself in the fair grounds. 



SALISBURY. 227 

The character of the streets, we noticed, appeared 
to be a curious mixture of the old and the modern. 
Salisbury, having been built so recently as 1220, 
failing- to be as old as possible, was probably 
bent on being as modern as is compatible with 
the national conservatism. In proof of this latter 
ambition there were so many structures, brave in 
fresh paint and in modern complexity of design, as 
to make the still remaining older houses appear out 
of place. 

Perhaps it was the intrusion of these modern 
buildings that made us suddenly dismiss our lum- 
bering vehicle, and decide to" walk into the dark- 
ness of one of the older narrower side-streets. 
A really experienced traveller never looks for the 
picturesque on the main thoroughfares. The true 
antique spirit of the past is usually to be found 
lurking among the less pretentious streets ; for 
the antique spirit, like all other decent ghosts, 
prefers darkness and secrecy to the glaxe of day- 
light, knowing full well the advantages to be gained 
by the jugglery of mysteriousness. Thus the true 
beauty of old towns is to be looked for among 
the sunken narrow sidewalks, among the rickety 
houses and the little weedy gardens, — parks and 



228 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

terraces once, perhaps, but which the poor of the 
town liave no time now to plant or to weed. All 
this we found as true of Salisbury as we had of 
many another cit}^, whose fresh modern main streets 
had sent us home with a chill of disappointment. 

The narrower, the meaner, the poorer the streets, 
we found as we walked along, the prettier the town 
grew. No one had found it worth his while to 
pull down these half-decayed old houses, or CA'en 
to repaint them ; so the tiny casemented windows, 
the carved Tudor pilasters, and the rare old doors 
and entrances had remained unspoiled. In color 
two or three of these streets were lovely in their 
dulled prismatic hues. The crumbling facades 
had the softness and mellowness of old ivory. 
Their faint yellows and pale grays made some 
of the carvings look like bits of tattered rich 
old lace. The only conspicuously modern cle- 
ment was the filth ; but as dirt seems everywhere 
the true and necessary concomitant of color of the 
best sort, we were disposed to regard the sloppy 
sidewalks and the reeking alley-ways with a lenient 
eye. 

A girl with a red kerchief pinned across her 
bosom, and a pitcher in one hand, suddenly appeared 



SALISBURY. 229 

from beneath one of the arched doorways. Instead 
of proceeding down the street, she turned at one of 
the corners of an alley-way, and went towards a 
]>ath that led into the open meadows ; for the out- 
lying fields straggled with comfortable assurance 
close along the edges of the streets. 

" She is going for water, and probably to the 
river ; I mean to follow her ! " I exclaimed. 

"How absurd! We shall only lose our way!" 
protested Boston, who, after the fixed habit of men, 
always made a point of distrusting an impulse. 

" Nonsense ! we have n't any way ; besides, we 
have discovered before now, that the true method 
of finding it is to lose it. Come ! " 

I started down the alley-way in pursuit of the 
red kerchief. Boston followed, but at a distance ; 
for a man at all times has a certain respect for the 
varnish of his boots, — a respect which is apt to be 
accentuated when he is following his wife into paths 
not of his choosing, and which in this case, at 
least, were uncommonly slippery. 

The reeking alley-way soon became a path along 
the river-bank. It had turned at a sharp angle, 
and lo ! almost at our feet stretched the low, 
sweet, straggling river. I was right. The girl, our 



230 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

guide, had come for water. She stooped over the 
bank, filled her ewer, and then rose slowly, its 
weight bending her over as she walked back along 
the path. Her red kerchief and her frowsy reddish 
hair made the scene seem less brilliant when she 
had disappeared behind the corner of the first 
house. 

We continued our walk along the river-bank. 
Each step brought a fresh revelation of beauty. 
First of all, there was the charm, which every one 
knows Avho has tried it, of following an unfamil- 
iar river. One never knows just where an unknown 
river may lead. As a guide, a stream or a little 
river is far more interesting than the most enter- 
taining of streets. It is more talkative, for one 
thing. Its babble and its ripple, as it flows gently 
over the sedgy grasses, is at once new and familiar. 
It is like the tones of some old friend's voice sound- 
ing in our ears, rendered strange only because he is 
clothed in unfamiliar garments. So this low-toned 
Avon sounded delightfully friendly, as it chatted to 
the weeds and the tall grasses growing along its 
straggling banks. It led us almost unconsciously 
along, as we travelled in the company of a number 
of wonderful old houses, whose decrepit appearance 



SALISBURY. 231 

told us how long they had been standing here, 
watching the river flow on. Here, at last, was the 
ideal Salisbury. This maze of soft foliage, these 
odorous river-banks, these rows of tottering build- 
ings, long since fallen out of the perpendicular, 
made a rich harmony of architectural adjuncts to 
the natural rural note of the meadows and the 
waving tree-tops. 

There was a bridge, I remember, which we crossed, 
and on which we stood for several moments, watch- 
ing the picture as it focussed into new outlines. 
Suddenly we lifted our eyes ; and there upward 
soared the giant spire of the cathedral. It shot its 
tapering spiral into the dizzy ether like a thing of 
life. 

There could have been no better point of view 
than this from which to gain one's first glimpse of 
this great spire. Subsequent observations taken 
from the cathedral close diminished very sensiljly 
the effect of its incomparable grace and its ma- 
jestic symmetry. A spire, more than any other 
architectural feature perhaps, demands a certain 
distance and the advantages of perspective. Seen 
at near range, neither its true height nor its just 
proportions can be properly measured. Here, in 



232 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

the midst of this rustic setting, with only the trees 
for rivals and to serve as aids for measurement, 
the noble spire rose toward heaven in all the ful- 
ness of its perfection. At first its true height is 
scarcely appreciable, so symmetrically proportioned 
are its four hundred and four feet. After repeated 
and careful examination, the wonder still remains 
that this tapering angle, lanced into the sky to such 
a daring altitude, can, at the last as at the first 
view, appeal to the eye rather because of its surpass- 
ing lightness and grace than merely as a triumph of 
height. This latter glory it leaves to its two rivals, 
to Strasburg and Amiens. It still remains un- 
equalled in the higher beauties of true grace of 
proportion and in simplicity of design. 

The note of contrast between such a noble archi- 
tectural feature as this spire and this smiling pasto- 
ral setting was touched again with singular felicity, 
we foimd, in the first full view we had of the cathe- 
dral, set in the midst of its beautiful close. 

In our subsequent walks about the little provin- 
cial streets of the city the presence of one of the 
greatest cathedrals in England would be scarcely 
suspected, so concealed is the magnificent structure 
behind its ramparts of walls and trees. Salisbury 




?n*r w.^u 4'"^ \ \'-\ \ 





'^■^ /*^ yw,.Jy«^ 



Salisbury Cathedral, from the Cloister. 



rage 232. 



, SALISBURY. 233 

is, I believe, the only walled cathedi-al in England. 
In the reign of Edward III. a license was granted 
for an embattled wall to be built around the en- 
closure, which contains the cathedral itself, the 
Bishop's Palace, the broad sweep of turf, and a 
number of smaller houses belonging to the cathe- 
dral. The walls are pierced by four gateways. 
The cathedral enclosure is in reality a city within 
a city. Once past the formidable-looking St. Anne's 
gateway with its quaintly ancient chapel overhead, 
one has the sense of treading consecrated ground. 

The cathedral rests its grand base on a clear, 
wide sweep of turf. The velvet of the lawn runs 
close to the roughened edges of the foundation 
stones. The trees are removed at wide dis- 
tances, and form no part of the immediate sur- 
roundings ; so that the wonderful structure stands 
clear and free. From its base to the diminutive 
apex of its spire there is nothing to break the 
fulness and grandeur of the effect of the structure 
as a whole. 

Next to the completeness of the genius which 
could conceive and erect such a building, is the 
talent which knew just how best to place it. Salis- 
bury is as perfectly placed as if Phidias had had 



234 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

a liand in it. There is much, indeed, in this cathe- 
dral to remind one of Greek workmanship. Its 
supreme air of high finish, the perfection of its 
proportion, its aerial grace, and its ideal symmetry 
all recall the greater works of those masters whose 
creations must forever remain the models of the 
world. One is under the same stress of necessity 
to view this cathedral from all sides and from 
every point of view as seizes upon one in gazing 
at the great statues of antiquity. The cathedral 
may be said to be as complete as the most perfect 
Greek statue. Much of the same airy grace, the 
lightness, and, more than all, that bloom which the 
best Greek work irradiates, belongs also to this 
cathedral ; the bloom that is only to be found at 
the most perfect moment of the growth and virility 
of an art. Salisbury was built at the most fruitful 
period of England's building era. Its inspiration 
came when architecture had attained the meridian 
of its technical skill, and when the art had been 
domiciled long enough to be capable of producing 
a truly national and original creation. Salisbury is 
as representative, as typical, and as national as the 
Parthenon. It is supremely English. It is so pre- 
eminently English, indeed, that it can still stand 



SALISBURY. 235 

as the embodiment of its religion, of that form 
which alone is suited to the English religious taste 
and to its spiritual tcmpei', — the form of the Es- 
tablished Church, a religion governed by law, 
administered by ceremonial, yet freed from despot- 
ism aud therefore typically Euglish. Salisbury is 
the ideal cathedral of such a religion. It was 
made for beautiful ceremonials which yet should 
have a congregational form, —for ceremonials which 
would have no need of the mysteries of Catholic sym- 
bolism. Its builders, though Catliolics and Catho- 
lics of the thirteenth-century bliudly-believing order, 
were nevertlieless Englishmen before they were 
Catholics. In those soaring lines, in that vast yet 
orderly-disposed mass, in the ricli-yet serious trac- 
ery, and in the grandeur of tlie harmonious outlines, 
the English talent for moderation, its genius for 
order, its love and delight in wise reticence, and its 
insistent demands for unity and proportion are re- 
vealed and embodied. If England were now capa- 
ble of producing so complete an architectural work, 
her genius would again run into this early Gothic 
mould, — into this precise mould which she made her 
own, — into the Early English, of which Salisbury 
remains as the most perfect example. 



236 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Another of the causes which comhined to com- 
plete the perfection of this cathedral was the fact 
of its having been built within the short period 
of thirty-eight years. The plan of the original de- 
signers was thus scrupulously adhered to, not al- 
tered and changed and then the structure itself 
finally torn down to suit still later innovators, as 
has been the fate of almost every other cathedral 
in England. This admirable celerity of execution 
proves the freedom and the skill attained by its 
builders. It again reminds us of the Greek work- 
men Avho could design and complete the buildings 
on the Acropolis in thirty or more short years. 

The history of the building of the cathedral 
comes down to us begirt with the usual decora- 
tive embellishments of legend and superstitious ro- 
mance. That the old Sarum Cathedral, which had 
crowned the old hill fortification, being succes- 
sively Brito-Roman, Saxon, and Norman, had fur 
centuries exercised its jurisdiction over half tlie 
southern diocese of England, history affirms. Also 
that in the time of Bishop le Poer, this ancient 
church was found suffering from a number of incon- 
veniences, such as scarcity of water, exposure, and 
the insults of the soldiery quartered in the castle 



SALISBURY. 237 

hard by, is likewise no fable. But the modern 
imagination finds itself lacking in flexibility when 
asked to believe that the site of the new cathedral, 
in the smiling fertile valleys of the plain, was de- 
termined by an arrow shot from the ramparts of 
old Sarum ; and one's credulity rebels at an ac- 
ceptance of the other alternative offered, that of 
believing that the site was revealed to the bishop 
in a dream by the Blessed Lady in person. The 
subsequent building of the church was carried along 
under the impetus of a religious fervor in keeping 
with this latter statement. A great body of the 
nobles, returning with the king from Wales during 
the laying of the foundations, went to Salisbury, 
" and each laid his stone, binding himself to some 
special contribution for a period of seven years." 
Little wonder that the cathedral grew apace. It 
grew so fast that, begun in 1217, it was com- 
pleted in 1258, the cloisters and chapter-house 
being added in the latter part of the same century. 
The history of the spire is less assured. It seems 
a question whether or not it formed a part of the 
original plan ; but, erected in 1380-1375, it noAv 
stands as the fitting completion to crown tlie nol)le 
structure. Two supremely interesting features in the 



238 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

external design are noticeable at a first glance, — 
the boldness of breaking the general outline by 
two transepts instead of one, and the beauty and 
simplicity of the ajisidal portion. The western 
front, compared with these two strikingly original 
features, loses in impressiveness, although in de- 
sign it possesses a unity in composition rarely seen 
in English fronts. The perfection of finish so no- 
ticeable in the exterior of Salisbury is due to the 
marvellous care taken to insure accuracy in the 
masonry. As soon as one part was finished, it was 
exactly copied in the next ; so that the completed 
whole presents an exactness and precision hardly 
paralleled, perhaps, in any other great building. This 
In'gh degree of finish is in some measure accounta- 
ble for the fault of severity in outline and the lack 
of shadow so often commented upon in this cathe- 
dral ; but the supreme elegance and the rare unity 
attained more than- outweigh such defects. 

The same perfection of finish that characterizes 
the exterior is found in the interior. The halls of a 
palace could not be more consummately radiant in 
their perfection. The eye wanders in dazed delight 
over the glistening floor, over the glittering mar- 
bles, and the polished Purbeck shafts. The green 



SALISBURY. 239 

of the latter material is only appreciable when 
polished ; so that although the ten great bays with 
their clustered columns are all of Purbcck, only the 
shafts gleam with color. The eye sweeps in un- 
encumbered freedom from length to length of the 
gloriously vaulted nave. The finely wrought em- 
broidery of the brass choir-screen separates the 
apsidal portion of the cathedral from the nave ; 
thus the cinque-cento glass in the Lady Chapel is 
clearly visible from the extreme western end. 

At the Reformation, although Salisbury was 
spared the usual barbarities inflicted by the Com- 
monwealth soldiery on the great cathedrals, it did 
not escape the fate of abandonment and desolation. 
Its true profanation was left for more experienced 
hands. In 1791 the architect Wyatt, with his origi- 
nal views as to how the eighteenth century could 
improve on the thirteenth, swept away screens, 
porches, chapels, tombs ; he " flung stained-glass by 
cart-loads into the open ditch ; destroyed ancient 
paintings, and levelled with the ground the campa- 
nile, which stood on the north side of the church," — 
all of which astonishing iconoclastic changes were 
deemed by the authorities of his time as " tasteful, 
effective, and judicious." Fortunately the unique 



240 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

and beautiful triforium, with its thickly clustered 
columns and its airy open arcade, as well as the 
splendor of the magnificent vaulting in the roof, 
escaped ; in the upi)er stories of tlie cathedral, at 
least, the original worlc of the builders remains 
unspoiled. Among otlier changes Wyatt ordained 
that the knights and Avarriors, the courtiers and 
their stiff-stomachered spouses, should be ranged 
in two long rows beneath the arches of the gi-eat 
aisles. It is a monstrous arrangement, and yet it 
produces a certain grandeur of effect. These mailed 
warriors, these courtiers in ruffles and lace, these 
Elizabethan-ruffed countesses, — the former grasp- 
ing their swords as if seeing in every gazer a Cru- 
sader's enemy ; others, more at peace with the 
world and not quite so sure of heaven, lying with 
hands stiffened in su])idication ; while the ladies, 
of course, are cast in the very image of piety, — 
this goodly company looked not unlike some gliostly 
band, kept here to guard the sacred precincts. In 
the monuments every period of mortuary art is rep- 
resented, from the era of the rudest sculpture to 
the refined and all too elegant creations of Flax- 
man, — "another lost mind," as Ruskin graphically 
describes this sculptor. There is the same massing 



SALISBURY. 241 

of picturesque historic fates here as at Winchester ; 
bishops and princes, courtiers and nobles, beauties 
and frail ones, having passed the dark portal, their 
effigies remain to commemorate their virtues and 
their deeds. Among the beauties lies the Countess 
of Pembroke, — 

" The glory of all verse, 
Sidney's sister, Pembroke's mother," — 

whose epitaph has been written in the " Arcadia " 
by a hand which will long outlast the limner 
or the engraver on more perishable marble or 
brass. 

To be deeply stirred by these bygone histories, 
or even to vibrate to any very profound impression, 
when under the influences of the singularly cheerful 
atmosphere which pervades this cathedral, would 
be, I think, difficult. It may be owing to the par- 
ticularly light and open character of the architec- 
tural effects, resulting from Wyatt's changes, to 
the absence of deep shadow in the mouldings, to a 
certain sense of thinness and meagreness produced 
by the severity of the decorations, and also, perhaps, 
to the fact that there is almost no old stained-glass 
remaining to insure enriching, sobering tones ; but 

certain it is that Salisbury, in spite of its perfec- 

16 



242 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

tions, fails in impressiveness. It is not that the 
splendid edifice is lacking in grandeur or in dig- 
nity ; but the resplendent light which penetrates 
into every portion of the vast building, and the 
extraordinarily airy, soaring character of the ar- 
chitectural lines, impart to this cathedral an un- 
■wontedly joyous aspect, one as far removed as 
possible from solemnity. 

Cathedrals have a very distinct and unique 
climate of their own. The atmosphere of Salis- 
bury differs as widely from the dusky twilight 
which underhangs St. Peter's vast dome as noon- 
day differs from the hour of the setting sun. 

The blithe and active verger, who had been busy 
locking companies of tourists into the choir and 
out of the cloisters since our arrival, seemed im- 
bued with a spirit and temper which were doubt- 
less the result of his cheerful surroundings. He 
had the alert vigor of an American stock-broker. 
His brisk business-like air and the hospitality of 
his smile were suggestive of a transatlantic per- 
sonality, even reaching to the lengths of a really 
instantaneous appreciation of a joke. 

Some tattered flags were suspended over a chan- 
try in the choir. As the little verger appeared to 




.=^ 



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ai 

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SALISBURY. 243 

have forgotten tlieir existence, Boston asked their 
history. 

" Oh," he replied, with a quick, soft little laugh, 
" I was n't goin' to mention 'um, sir ; " then after a 
])ause, filled up with another laugh, " since they 
was to commemorate our victories in the War of 
1812." 

" We don't mind your little victories," said 
Boston, quietly ; " but — we don't see any flags of 
1776." Whereat the red-faced Britons composing 
our party smiled, but rather feebly, while the bust- 
ling little verger laughed outright. 

The two chief features in our tour of inspection 
were the chapter-house and the cloisters. The 
former is a little model of elegance. Of a later 
date than the cathedral, it reproduces the era 
when French geometric tracery was most in vogue 
in England. Next in interest to the charms of 
refinement furnished by the light gracefulness of 
lines whose intersections are like harmonies in a 
musical accord, are tlie sculptures filling the vous- 
soirs and the spandrels of the arcades. These latter, 
even in their restored condition, brilliant as they 
are in modern paint, their decay having been 
helped out by the guessing of the modern chisel, 



244 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

still remain as among the most interesting of 
the specimens of early Gothic art. The sculp- 
tures under the windows within the chapter-house 
were the effort, also, of the chisel to substitute 
figures for the mspired pages of the Bible. Here 
the Creation, from the group of a very pre-Raphael- 
ite Adam and Eve under a grotesque tree in the act 
of eating forbidden things, to the dramatic scene 
in which Moses is represented as striking the rock, 
is reproduced with remarkable truth and earnest- 
ness. The nationality of the sculptors is revealed 
in the fact that the vines in Noah's vineyard are 
trained on trellises in the Italian fashion. 

All appearance of foreign influence is lost in 
turning into the cloisters. Here again the inspi- 
ration of the true English genius reasserts itself. 
The style of these rich elaborate arcades, with 
their thickly clustered columns and the large tre- 
foiled decorations in the unglazed windows, marks 
a later development of the Early English than that 
seen in the cathedral ; but the same grave severity 
of character is retained. Nothing more beautiful 
could be imagined than one's walks around those 
quadrangular cloisters. The contrast of the long 
gray arcades and the graceful ornate windows Avith 




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SALISBURY. 245 

tJie smooth green cloistcr-g-arth, the patches of 
bhie sk}' framed in the trefoil openings, and tlie 
dark shade cast on the greensward by two fine 
cedars, the sole inhahitants of this marble airy 
palace, form one of the most beautiful combina- 
tions conceivable of the delicacy of art and the 
refinement of nature. 

The Englishman is never more an artist than 
Avhen to noble architectural effects he adds the 
delicate yet perfecting lujte of a rural surrounding. 
Even the Italian may learn from him in this. The 
Italian, having been born of a prodigal mother, 
leaves too much to chance in his arrangement of 
natural effects ; but the Briton has a master touch 
in the grouping of trees and in the laying out of a 
sward. He knows tliat as art lives by contrasts, 
so a great and beautiful edifice gains by the same 
subtle law. Who but an Englishman would have 
had the daring not only to group those low ecclesi- 
astical buildings in the close so near to the mag- 
nificent cathedral, with its dwarfing spire and 
mountainous roof, but also to place about the green 
those charmingly lovely Elizabethan and Queen 
Anne houses, whose red gables and brown and gray 
roofs delight the eye with their broken irregular 



246 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

perspectives ; whose ivied walls, trellised windows, 
and tiny blooming Avindow-panes, with their sugges- 
tion of sweet domestic uses and of home-life, blend 
in perfect accord with the noble temple yonder, 
built for a great people's prayers ? 

The Englishman, whose home is his shrine, brings 
it to his church's altar, that it may rest within its 
bosom and blessing ; and thus the cathedral, in the 
midst of these blooming homes, stands like some 
antique temple on whose steps garlands have been 
strewn. 



STONEHENGE. 247 



CHAPTER XI. 

STONEHENGE. —WARMINSTER. — LONGLEAT. — FROME. 

'THHE afternoon of our departure from Salisbury 
was one of radiant loveliness. It was a per- 
fect English day, one of those that seem to make 
fine weather in England different from any other. 
There is a peculiar quality in the best English 
weather, something at once rare and fine, from 
which all the vulgar pomp of over-luxuriance of 
sunshine and excess of heat and warmth appear 
to have been miraculously eliminated. If Eng- 
land, as a country, is the most perfectly finished 
agriculturally, from the point of view of climate it 
is assuredly the most highly civilized. It knows 
neither the extremes of heat nor cold ; it is tem- 
perate, restrained, and when in fine humor, never 
loses its repose or its reserve. It is the climate 
of all others to produce a race of great men, — 
men who shall be as wise as they are courageous 
and as tender as they are strong; for men, like 



248 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

nature, come to their finest flower under temper- 
ate skies. 

The weather had no reserves for us that after- 
noon. The fine golden light fell like a shower 
upon the land. Never had English turf seemed 
greener, or the hedge-rows more fragrant, or the 
trees more nobly tall and full, or the meadows 
richer in tone and color. The cottage windows 
"were ablaze with carnations. The vines were laden 
with their burden of roses. In the fields the very 
cattle felt the influences of the fine soft air, of the 
pure ethereal sky, and of the odors and perfume 
which the earth sent up as its incense of praise 
and worship. Under this sky of blue, in this 
bath of warm air, the oxen moved lazily, luxuri- 
ously, treading their deep furrows with an absent, 
dreamy look, their dull natures insensibly stirred 
by the loveliness and the fairness of the hour. 
Men stopped their work to lean on their hoes 
and rakes. They shouted across a field or two, 
f(jr in such weather man has the instinct of com- 
panionship ; there is a compelling sentiment in 
such skies as these. Doubtless, if a girl or a 
Avoman had api»earcd, we should have witnessed 
a bit of rustic love-making ; but only the field- 



STONEHEXGE. 249 

hands and farmers were abroad in the wide grain- 
lields. 

Tlie drive out from Salisbury had been through 
a series of green fields, parks, and meadows. In 
an incredibly short time we had gained the open 
country. These rich, fertile valley-lands made 
progress swift and easy. Our drive was to include 
a climb into the hill-country, up into the famous 
Salisbury Plain that we might see Stonehenge ; 
thence we should proceed to Warminster, in all 
comprising a distance of eighteen or twenty miles. 
As there were complications in the matter of 
roads, we had armed ourselves with two county 
maps and a guide-book, and had taken besides 
the additional precaution to receive minute an|d 
particular directions from the innkeeper of the 
" White Hart." We started forth equipped, in 
confident certainty ; but behold, not five miles 
from Salisbury, we were at a stand-still. We were 
facing an opening of four roads. The county maps, 
with characteristic impartiality, gave us the choice 
of all four, as all lead up into the hill country, but 
did not enlighten us as to which one went directly 
to Stonehenge. The guide-book treated the subject 
with the fine scorn of a book whose pages were 



'250 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

dedicated to a history of Druidical ruins. The inn- 
keeper had been wiser than either, and had not 
even mentioned them. So we sat still and dis- 
cussed the perplexity, knowing by the interroga- 
tory movement of Ballad's ears that he was quite 
as much in doubt as we. 

Suddenly a foot-passenger appeared walking to- 
wards us on the right-hand road, — a gentleman 
carrying a fine bunch of roses in his hand. As he 
drew near, to our question as to which was our 
road he responded with charming courtes}^, coming 
close to the carriage wheel as he answered, — 

" Your road is to the left along the river ; but 
farther on you must turn to the right, and still 
farther to the left again. If you will allow me I 
will mark it out." 

He laid the roses on the travelling-rugs, drew a 
pencil and a bit of paper from his pocket, and pro- 
ceeded to sketch, with remarkable swiftness and 
skill, a rough draught of the direction of the road. 
A moment later, barely waiting to receive our thanks, 
he had lifted his hat and proceeded on his way. 

" And there is a tradition extant that English- 
men are rude ! " I exclaimed, as Boston plied the 
whip on Ballad's dark coat. 



STONEHENGE. 251 

"Englishmen are only rude when they travel. 
It is their way of carrying war into an enemy's 
country." 

" If they leave their politeness at home, they 
assuredly forget none of the practices of the art ! " 
I answered, with the soft tones of our helper's 
London voice and the readiness of his Kindly im- 
pulse still strong upon me. 

His sketch served us better than the maps or 
the guide-book. In an hour we were toiling up the 
first long hill of the Salisbury Plain. 

We had passed, in an hour's space, into a world 
as changed as if an enchanter's wand had whirled 
us from a fairy-land of verdure into the abode 
of some aerial sprite dwelling in a desert. Salis- 
bury Plain is an endless succession of hills, sans 
verdure, sans trees, sans water, sans anything 
that grows save grass, and a short stumpy inferior 
quality of that. Far as the eye can reach it rests 
on a ripple of these low, barren, naked hills. To 
make the descent of one is to begin the ascent of 
the next. This unending succession of undulatory 
lines ends by producing the impression of an ar- 
rested sea. It seems as if earth at some time in 
her changeful history must have been possessed of 



252 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

the fluctuant instability of the ocean's turbulent 
element. Nothing but the sea, when possessed by 
the demon of unrest, could be imagined as the fit- 
ting comparison to a bit of earth so full of strange 
contortions, of restless undulations, and of unstable 
outline. 

The land is as barren and as uninhabited as 
the sea. There was no sign of hamlet or hut in 
all the wide expanse. The only proofs of man's 
existence we saw were those of his labor. A few 
hay-mounds here and there reared their pyramidal 
tops against the sky. A curse seems to have been 
laid on this strange fantastic tract of country, — 
the curse of desolation. Man, like nature, appears 
to have abandoned these bald hills to their fate. 
Desolation and sterility of foliage are so infrequent 
in verdant England as to make this striking note 
of contrast the more impressive. On our own 
wide continent earth has a Imndred different faces, 
as she has many climates and temperatures ; but 
the wonder grows that here, in this compact little 
island, there should be room for so many varied 
aspects and such sharp transitions. It appears, 
however, as if it were meant that England should 
be an epitome of earth, as man is himself Nature in 



STONEHENGE. 253 

miniature ; and thus the Salisbury Plain is to be 
taken as a kind of sample specimen of the barren 
and the desolate. 

History and tradition come to accentuate the 
emphasis of romance and weird unreality Avhich 
nature has outlined. These hills have been as en- 
riched by the vicissitudes of human experience as 
they are barren of any reliable records which shall" 
reveal them. 

The only rival of the hay-ricks are the barrows, — 
ancient burying-mounds, so ancient, indeed, that 
their history is lost in conjecture. The multiplicity 
of their number appears to prove at least that only 
an army could have yielded dead enough to people 
so vast a burying-ground. Here many a tall Roman 
and fair-haired Saxon found their long home. The 
plain, for centuries before the Conquest, was the 
natural battle-ground of the rude disputants for 
Britain's sovereignty. Celt and Roman alike had 
early seen the military value of these heights. 
Camps and rude fortifications held the more advan- 
tageous positions long before, with vast labor and 
at huge outlay and cost, the great fortress of old 
Sarum was built. If ever a battle-ground was in 
keeping with the horrors of war, this gaunt skeleton 



254 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

of earth's beauty must have seemed, to even the 
least imaginative Saxon, a fitting arena for the 
clash of arms and for the dark work of killing and 
dying. Earth itself looks as if it had been stripped 
and then left for dead. 

Suddenly, as we rose on the top of one of the 
hills, a mass of strange ruins stood out against the 
sky. Over the brow of the next hill they were 
facing us. Rude in outline, and of giant height, 
the huge gray stones, blacl<; against the pale sky, 
were as bare and naked as the land on wliicli they 
rested. Here were no flowing draperies of ivy or 
the velvet of green moss to soften the rough out- 
lines and to make a bit of poetry out of decay. 
The "hanging stones" of Stonehenge stand as piti- 
lessly exposed to the winds of the bleak desert on 
which they rest as did the bleaching bones of the 
rude warriors who found their graves here. Like 
bones that have been whitened in the sun, washed 
to polished smoothness by the storm and rain, these 
Cyclopean stones bear evidences of the slow but 
inevitable yielding to the elements. That king of 
architects, the Tempest, has carved this barbaric 
heap into shapes to suit liis own fancy ; he appears 
to have tossed the huge fragments about in riotous 




I 



STONEHENGE. 255 

glee, till their present fantastic attitudes and posi- 
tions have become the despair of the archaeologist. 

On a nearer inspection, when we alighted and 
walked around the strange monument, we saw that 
sucii intention as could be read in the position of 
the stones clearly showed some attempt at the for- 
mation of a circle or a horse-shoe. But whether 
we believe w^ith Inigo Jones that Stonehenge was 
once a Roman temple, or with the learned Dr. 
Charlton that it is a Danish ruin, or with other 
archjEologists that the Druids hero erected one of 
their puzzling shrines, the ultimate result remains 
the same. Conjecture finds no solid ground on 
which to build the certainty of fact. For once, at 
least, the tourist need not bow his head in igno- 
rance and humility ; his guesses are as good as 
those of his superiors in that line. Whatever 
mystic rites in pagan temple of gods or heroes 
Stonehenge may have been built to celebrate, 
whether the temple" of a religion which is dead 
or of a god as forgotten as the believers, Stone- 
henge and the Salisbury Plain appeal to the 
beholder as does i\\Q Nile wdth its mysterious com- 
pany of the Sphinxes, as solemn reminders of that 
great workman, the voiceless Past. Both belong to 



256 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

a time and to an era of whose life and history we 
have lost the key. That deep organ chord, modern 
sympathy, would doubtless, if furnished witli the 
clew to these remote, shadowy lives and alien be- 
liefs, bridge the gulf and vibrate still to those dis- 
tant echoes ; but earth, rather than man, appears 
to have retained the dread secret of their fate, and 
to have been cursed, in virtue of this knowledge, 
with eternal sterility. Nature, whenever she has 
a secret to guard, is stricken mute ; time having 
found, doubtless, that she is possessed of the com- 
mon failing of her sex. 

An hour after leaving Stonehenge, it became a 
question whether or not we also might not end by 
finding on the Salisbury Plain a fate similar to 
other warriors who have wrestled with its difficul- 
ties and dangers. Ballad, quite suddenly and with- 
out warning, became very queer in his hind legs. 
He began his vagaiies by slipping, on all fours, 
down one of the longer hills. This practice not 
being to his liking, he gave every evidence of 
its being his secret wish to roll down. Only an 
embarrassment of harness and Boston's obstinate 
grip on the bit prevented his accomplishing this 
unexpected freak. 



STONEHENGE. 257 

"It's the hills, Boston, and no wonder; there 
has been nothing but miles of them since leaving 
Salisbury," I cried, as we both alighted. 

An examination proved that it was worse than 
rebelliousness. It was not the hills ; it was a 
question of ankles. Both hind ankles bent com- 
pletely beneath his weight. 

And we were fifteen miles from "Warminster, our 
destination ! Fifteen miles, and not a hut or even 
a hovel to be seen ! 

We looked at each other as the full meaning of 
the disaster burst upon us. We then sat down by 
the roadside, and held a consultation, as Romans 
and Britons had done before us. Either the horse 
was dead lame, or he was dead tired. To settle 
the question, it would be best to experiment while 
he was still comparatively alive. The result of 
our efforts proved that he could walk perfectly 
well on a level without giving any symptoms of 
fatigue ; also that he could ascend a hill without 
more than his habitual protest against being hur- 
ried. But at the first beginning of an incline came 
the terrifying droop of the hind quarters, a look in 
his eyes as if the world were going from beneath 

him, and that dread bending of the hindermost 

17 



258 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

ankles. The ankles on examination seemed to 
be neither bruised, nor inflamed, nor sore to 
the tonch ; but when going down-hill, a pair of 
india-rubber adjustments would have served him 
quite as well. 

However, we must push on or prepare to spend 
the night on this desolate road. Push on wc 
did, literally. Boston pushed the carriage up the 
steeper hills, making an improved brake of himself 
going down, as I tugged vigorously at the bit. 

This mode of procedure brought us, at the end 
of an hour, to a rude little hamlet lying in a valley. 
The hamlet consisted of a dozen or more huts and 
thatched houses and a small tavern. The landlord 
of the latter was at our bridle before we had fairly 
reached the first house. The village grouped itself 
in various attitudes of curiosity and interest. Every 
man present felt of Ballad's ankles, while every 
woman freely gave her opinion ; but none could 
tell us more than we ourselves had discovered. 

" He 's not a-gone lame, sur, and he ain't been 
stung, nather. It's a bit of weakness, sur, — he 
ain't used to tlie hills," was the innkeeper's reassur- 
ing verdict. " He '11 go along safe now if you ease 
him a bit." 



STONEHENGE. 259 

" All the same, I 'd rather stop here over night," 
I whispered to Boston. 

"In this wretched tavern? Why, it's impossi- 
ble," he answered, in what I feared was an almost 
audible tone. 

" Oh, I don't in the least mind. Can you give us 
a room ? " I asked of the innkeeper. 

The man's face fell. 

" We 'er full, ma'am, thank ye, ma'am," pulling 
his forelock; "we haven't a bed left." 

At his answer a woman's face emerged from a 
side door, flourishing two arms up to the elbows 
in flour paste. 

" Perhaps the Pierces' would take 'em, John," 
she cried out ; then she as suddenly withdrew. 

" They 're quite respectable folk half a mile up 
the road, and takes travellers in now and again," 
explained the innkeeper. 

" But can't you take us in yourself ? " T almost 
pleaded ; for the twilight was falling fast, and 
Ballad in his present condition, and the prospect 
of fifteen miles more of this desolate country to 
pass through, did not appeal to my imagination. 

" I 'm sorry enough, ma'am, but we can't ; " and 
his face fell asain. 



260 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

The crowd, instead of thinning, liad been growing 
larger. Some farm hands, evidently fresh from the 
fields, and bearing equally strong evidence of hav- 
ing come fresh from something less harmless, 
pressed emphatically about the carriage. One or 
two were unmistakably drunk. One whom Bac- 
chus had rendered bolder than the rest pushed his 
way towards me, and began to sing a coarse song 
in my honor. The innkeeper gave him a blow 
that sent him and the song in the dirt. The 
women snickered, and the men laughed. 

Evidently this was no place for us, whether 
Ballad had ankles or not ; so we whipped the 
latter's unoffending back, and with a curt good- 
evening were off. 

The country was again as desolate and hilly as 
before. The moon, on which we had relied as our 
lantern after the night should set in, with the 
usual obstinacy of her nature when counted on for 
a particular exhibition of her powers for shining, 
had sulkily retired behind a cloud. Again neither 
house nor building was visible. Never was there 
such stillness. The sound of ballad's heavy foot- 
falls and our own voices made the loneliness and our 
remoteness seem the more oppressive. The dumb 



WAnmxsTER. 261 

companionship of sheep and cows or the twitter of 
a bird's note woukl have been of infinite comfort, to 
reassure us that some link of life was near to con- 
nect us with the living, breathing, active world ; 
but nothing save the echoes of our voices came 
back to us, as if even they had failed to find a 
home. 

Reach Warminster we did, when the night and 
we were nearly spent. At last came the cheering 
light of the distant town. Earth took on more 
civilized forms, and the world looked very much as 
usual, set in the mould of a small provincial town, 
as we drove through the Warminster streets to our 
inn. 

An experienced hostler the next morning ex- 
plained the mystery of Ballad's ankles. Again the 
trouble lay not in the ankle, but in something else. 
It was in the carriage that the true difficulty was 
found. The latter had no brake. It had been 
built for the level country about Chichester. But 
for these obstinate hills a brake was not only es- 
sential, but it must be made of extra grappling- 
|)0wer. The hostler advised our waiting until we 
should reach Bath, as there were no good carriage- 
builders in Warminster. The hills between th's 



262 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

town and Bath, which we hoped to reach in our 
next day's drive, were, he assured us, comparatively 
trifling. 

We gave Ballad a day and a half in which to 
forget his late experience. When he appeared 
early on the following morning, he started off with 
such merriment and light-heartedness as proved 
that only our own lack of forethought had been 
to blame for the recent unpleasantness. 

Our road to Bath was to include a drive through 
Longleat, the famous and splendid seat of the Mar- 
quis of Bath, and was to pass through Frome, one 
of the most ancient towns in Southern England. 

Longleat is an easy distance from Warminster ; 
but the heat and dust on the highway made the 
hours seem trebly long. Once within the gates of 
the great estate, however, and we experienced anew 
that peculiar sensation which we had noticed as 
belonging to all such parks. Beneath the airy ave- 
nues of the great trees we were in another climate. 
These vast, perfectly finished, and carefully arranged 
estates have a climate as distinct from the high- 
way or plebeian fields and meadows as a great 
cathedral has from a glaring little wayside chapel. 
Beneath these plumed trees the noonday appears 



-^Jji^i I £ 







O 

X 

< 

o 
2: 
o 
h4 



LONGLEAT. 263 

never fully to penetrate ; the glare of hot spaces 
of ground is unknown, so artfully are the laws of 
landscape-gardening administered ; the stretches of 
turf and meadows are cooled by the well-placed 
groups of trees ; they are broken by a fountain 
there, a gleaming pool beyond, by the rise and fall 
of hills with their trailing robes of shadows, or 
by the heart of gloom that dwells in the dense 
woods. 

At Longleat the art of man is surpassed by the 
glories of nature. Somersetshire is perhaps the 
loveliest of the English counties. The romantic 
character of its scenery certainly places it among 
the most highly picturesque ; and Longleat is set 
in the very heart of the county, where the blended 
loveliness of its hill and valley scenery, its super- 
abounding richness and fertility, appeared to have 
focussed into highest beauty. From the celebrated 
Prospect Hill, the chief glory of Longleat Park, 
the eye sweeps over a glorious landscape ; the 
country, dipping into the valleys beneath one, 
rises on banks of hills beyond to the very heavens ; 
the noble trees on the hill have been spared and 
their foliage trimmed to form a natural frame to 
the enchanting outlook ; thus the scene is broken 



264 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

into a series of pictures, a gallery whose master- 
pieces can be tlie better grasped and enjoyed. 

With tlie inconstancy of true lovers of the 
beautiful, we decided that the charms of Longleat 
far exceed the glories of either Arundel or Good- 
wood. While it lacks the character of feudal 
splendor peculiar to Arundel, and the vast outlook 
to be had from the Goodwood heiglits, which com- 
mand both the sea and the land, Longleat has a 
more highly finished air of magnificence than 
either. This effect is due not alone to the rich 
Somersetshire setting ; the character of Longleat 
House is in itself singularly impressive. It is both 
a palace and a home. To the stateliness of the 
former it adds that air of domestic usage which 
the Englishman alone, of all the inhabitants of 
great mansions, has been able to impress on a 
huge pile of masonry. The house is nobly set on 
a vast carpet of turf, in the midst of glowing par- 
terres. Its original builder. Sir John Thynne, the 
founder of the house of Bath, went to Padua for 
his architect, and the present building stands ex- 
ternally as John of Padua originally left it. It was 
built according to the style then in vogue in Italy, 
the Tuscan. But in spite of this most composite 



LONGLEAT. 265 

of the renaissance styles, the arcliitect has made 
the great house more English than Italian. He 
horrowed his Doric columns and his Corin- 
thian capitals from Greece, and the plan of his 
elevation from Italy ; but the whole as a whole 
is pre-eminently English. It has a massive ele- 
gance and a soberness of dignity which have noth- 
ing in common with Italian architecture. The 
architect brought with him his love for immensity. 
The delight in the vast is inherent in the Italian, 
whose buildings and churches must be his refuge 
from the torrid skies and the burning suns of his 
tropical summer, and beneath whose roofs he seeks 
to find the breadth and largeness of his open-air 
spaces. Longleat House is a replica of the vast 
Italian palaces, whose walls seem to enclose acres 
of space. Its glorious dimensions make the his- 
toric visit of George III. and his queen with their 
suite numbering forty, over a hundred and twenty- 
five persons sleeping within the same house during 
the royal occupancy, no very wonderful feat of 
hospitality. In view of such a multiplicity of 
windows, doubtless each visitor found himself in 
undisputed right of both pillows. 

Longleat, in the proud regalia of her history, 



266 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

boasts not only the glory of entertaining royalty ; 
lier fame is further enriched with the shadow of 
romance, and darkened by the stain of crime. 
One of her earlier owners, Mr. Thomas Thynne, 
not having come into the w^orld late enough to 
benefit by the wisdom of a recent philosopher, com- 
mitted the indiscretion of marrying a widow. That 
she was beautiful goes without saying. That she 
was young — her previous lord, the Earl of Ogle, 
leaving her to learn all the wiles of widowhood at 
the tender age of twelve — relieves us of the ne- 
cessity of pressing indignation to the point of abhor- 
rence. In three years the lovely if youthful Lady 
Ogle had learned all the arts which belonged to her 
condition. She had succeeded in ensnaring the 
affections of the owner of Longleat, wdiom she 
married, reserving, however, all the joys of her 
favor for a rival, a noble Swedish count. Long- 
leat never saw its new-made mistress. The bride, 
after the marriage ceremony, in spite of the mag- 
nificent preparations made at Longleat for her 
reception, suddenly developed a taste for a wedding 
journey. There could have been nothing very sin- 
gular in so innocent a preference in a young beauty, 
who presumably wished to parade her happiness 



LONGLEAT. 267 

and her new gowns before the world. But when 
slie went abroad with her trousseau, leaving the 
groom behind to enjoy the bridal arches and the 
Longleat festivities alone, her conduct, by her own 
sex at least, was adjudged as savoring of eccen- 
tricity. When, a short time after, the poor aban- 
doned gentleman was shot and killed by four Polish 
bullets instigated by Swedish hatred and Swedish 
gold, the clew to the lady's erratic impulses ap- 
peared to have been found. But crime, it was dis- 
covered, was no better passport to the affections of 
this singular, twice-widowed beauty than had been 
her murdered husband's ardor. The Swedish Count 
was dismissed, while she turned for solace to the 
Duke of Somerset, drowning remorse, if so deep a 
passion ever stirred the lady's becalmed soul, in the 
intoxications of the political intrigues which made 
Queen Anne's Court so admirable an arena for 
restless spirits. 

No shadow of crime or trace of tragedy rested 
on the great house on that brilliant morning, as 
we turned to take our last look at its splendor 
and beauty. As if to dissipate even the mem- 
ory of that dark occurrence, the sun had cleared 
the skies of the wind-clouds, and was pouring 



268 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

a flood of golden-dusted light over the huge gray 
pile. 

There was fully an hour's driving before "we were 
out of the Longleat Park, thickly peopled with its 
lierds of deer and cattle scattered through its great 
lawns and woods ; but an hour was none too long to 
linger over those seven miles of garden loveliness. 

The remainder of the forenoon's drive to Frome 
was a continuation of the verdant valleys and the 
richly wooded uplands which we found made the 
charm and the picturesqueness of this beautiful 
Somersetshire County. 

At Frome there was to be a long midday halt 
and rest. We had prepared ourselves for a vast 
outlay of admiration, since all early English his- 
tory teems with recitals of Frome's importance and 
activity in early Celt and Norman days. We had 
counted on finding the Frome streets lined with 
picturesque houses and rich in an antique archi- 
tectural setting. But the Frome of the dark 
ages must have disappeared with its ancient 
importance and dignity. Modern Frome we found 
chiefly a little town full of little shops, with only 
a series of hilly streets to give it even a mod- 
erately unique appearance. The centre of interest 



FROME. 269 

was no farther away than our inn. On our 
arrival we found an unwonted bustle and ac- 
tivity. There was a flying a])out of white-capped 
chambermaids and an agitation in the demeanor 
of the solitary waiter which announced at once 
that the extraordinary was about to take place. It 
was with difficulty that we succeeded in awaking 
even a response to our appeal for luncheon. Oh yes, 
they might be able to give us a luncheon if we 
could wait ; in an hour maybe, or perhaps even 
later. Meanwhile we could sit in the smaller coffee- 
room. At high noon, with an English sun heated 
to summer heat, with a drooping horse before one 
and a hungry gnawing within, one is not disposed 
to be as actively belligerent against fate as when 
confronted with such trying circumstances under 
less helpless conditions. We meekly gave signs of 
accepting our destiny. Our humility, however, met 
with its reward. The landlady suddenly appeared 
in the large hall, resplendent in pink ribbons and a 
rustling black silk, and was immediately touched 
with the spectacle of our dejectedness. 

" Mary, send up some cold 'am and beer and the 
muffins immediately ; they won't be 'ere yet. — Hit 's 
a party, ma'am," she continued, addressing me in 



270 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

an undertone of subdued excitement, " as his coniin' ; 
hit 's the choir from the town, over heighty ; and 
perhaps you'd hke to see the tables, ma'am, while 
your luncheon 's being spread." She led the way 
with smiling, triumphant complacency. 

The tables were, in truth, a fine sight. There 
were four long dazzlingly white cloths spread on 
tables forming a quadrangle. Fine old shapes of 
antique glass and silver gleamed among the dressed 
hams, the tongues, the turkeys, the jellies and sal- 
ads, each dish brave in its pretty toilet of curled 
papers. 

" There 's heighty covers laid, has you see," 
smiled the landlady, as she surveyed the spectacle 
with the eye of a general who had massed her 
forces and to whom the victory was already a fore- 
gone conclusion ; " they 're hall from one church, — 
the choir, and the wardens an' their wives, and the 
vicar himself and his lady, — and there they come 
now." 

We stepped out on the balcony leading from our 
own modest coffee-room to look at the " heighty." 
The vicar and his lady were very easily picked out, 
and their identity established. The rest of the com- 
pany were most unmistakably middle-class ; farmers, 



FROME. 271 

smaller gentry, and provincial tradesmen com- 
posed the orderly mass that clambered out of the 
high drags and the long open wagons. The com- 
pany embraced all ages, from the very youthful 
maidens who turned crimson with bashful self- 
consciousness as the equally crimson youths helped 
them to alight, to the venerable grandame and 
grandsire whose tottering steps were steadied by 
strong arms and filial care. Singularly enough, 
most of these people had a strangely familiar look. 
We were almost certain we had met most of their 
faces before, as, in truth, we had. The faces, or 
rather their prototypes, belonged to the owners of 
the quiet homesteads and the larger richer farms 
we had passed so often in our driving. Here were 
the stout motherly faces, a trifle redder and over- 
heated now, and not so attractive in their over- 
trimmed bonnets as in the snowy caps, beneath 
which their calm eyes were lifted from the stocking- 
darning as Ballad's crisp footfall startled their 
ear. Here also were the old people, very smart in 
apparel, but quite as tottering and infirm as when 
they hobbled to the door-sill to see us pass. The 
younger girls and women were less recognizable 
in their prim Sunday attire, and assuredly not half 



272 C.VniEDRAL DAYS. 

SO pretty as in their evciT-day costume of broad 
garden hat and a])ron. 

Nothing could liave been more orderly and 
soberly decorous than the behavior of the little 
congregation. Whether it was that the presence 
of the wardens and the vicar had a depressing- 
effect, or whether this melancholy little band were 
merely suffering from the constitutional national 
malady, — that habitual dreary dulness which per- 
vades all English holidays, — it is certain that if the 
success of the present occasion were to be gauged 
by its festival aspect, even its projector must have 
been haunted by the dark suspicion that it was 
resulting in failure. Since, however, the English- 
man has not been brought up to associate the act 
of taking a holiday with the idea of pleasure, these 
loyal sons of the Church were doubtless munching 
tarts and genteelly disposing of ham without a 
suspicion that silence was not the most ideal com- 
pliment to their excellence. Even the many tank- 
ards of ale and beer which we saw going the rounds 
of the table appeared to have little appreciable 
effect on the flow of talk. Towards the last there 
did come from behind the swinging doors a sub- 
dued murmur of chit-chat, enlivened with a buzz 



FROME. 273 

of short low laughter. But to the end the awful 
presence of the vicar appeared to have its re- 
straining effect ; the talk was pitched to a church 
whisper. 

I am disposed to believe that to our own soil 
have flown that wholesome heartiness, vivacious ex- 
uberance, and louder-tongued jollity in which older, 
gayer England was wont to indulge in those days 
when it seasoned its cake with that heartiness 
of enjoyment which won it its name of " merrie 
England." Our American way of taking pleasure 
may have a touch of plebeian plainness about it, 
considered from the standard of English reticence 
and self-restraint ; but laughter — broad, strong, 
deep laughter — is one of the best national habits 
for a growing nation to cultivate. A people that 
laugh are a people who have little to fear from 
tyrants or despots, in whatever form they may 
come. An American joke keeps the political sky 
clear. 



18 



274 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER XII. 

BATH. 

I ''OR several miles before reaching Bath on our 
way out of Frome, Ballad had begun forcibly 
to resent the deceits practised on him by the 
suave hostler at Warminster. The hills, far 
from being trifling, might more truthfully liave 
been described as formidable. What to Boston's 
and my own enraptured sight was a landscape 
rich in an altogether unexpected originality of 
character and formation, — steep conelike hills dip- 
ping into slits of valleys, hamlets and villages 
perched on the slanting inclines like nosegays on 
an Alpine-peaked hat, miniature waterfalls which 
looked as if turned on to order, a shining river 
running through the sinuous valley as if it were a 
liquid snake, quaint little chapels hanging in mid- 
air, and castles over whose battlemented walls we 
rode serenely, — a country, in a word, strangely 
fantastic for orderly, sober England, — was to 



BATH. 275 

Ballad's weary and incompetent ankles only a land 
Lig witli potentialities of suffering. 

He had made a struggle, and a brave one, to put 
his best foot forward. He had had desperate spurts 
of energy going up the hills, ending in a complete 
collapse going down. The collapse had finally 
ended in rebellion. He refused even to attempt 
to propel his tired body an inch farther. Natu- 
rally, forcible measures were resorted to ; but the 
strokes of the whip moved him as little as the most 
alluring entreaties. His feet remained rooted to 
the ground. 

We were half-way down the long and truly mag- 
nificent descent of Coombe Down, one of the higher 
hills overhanging Bath. The city lay beneath us, 
— we could overlook its chimney-pots ; but we had 
still before us at least two miles of steep down-hill 
work, and Ballad was beginning to show deter- 
mined signs of his desire to lie down and die by 
the roadside. Die we were resolved he should not, 
at least not without the formalities of an attending 
physician and the privacy of a stable. Some means 
must be found to keep him on his legs. 

" I never heard of a horse dying of weak ankles, 
did you ?" I asked, a trifle nervously, as our poor 



276 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

beast again made a futile effort to take a little 
wayside repose. 

Boston jerked the bit with such force that 
Ballad came very near performing a somersault 
in the air instead of accomplishing his own lazier 
intention. 

" No, I never did ; but it would be just our luck 
to have him invent a new way out of life. Get 
down, can you, alone ? and can you take out a bag 
or two ? The carriage must be lightened, and we 
must walk. You had better take the whip, and I '11 
lug the bags." 

Such was our entrance into Bath! — Boston lead- 
ing Ballad on one side, with the bags in the other 
hand, as I plied the poor creature with the whip. 

It would have been funny even to us, as an 
incident in our experience, I think, weary and an- 
noyed as we wei'e ; but what prevented our com- 
plete appreciation of the humorous side of the 
situation was the fact that the spectacle we pre- 
sented evidently appealed to the humor of the 
passers-by. The people, indeed, as they passed, 
were at no pains to conceal tlieir entire appre- 
ciation of the joke. Some inconsiderate draymen 
and farmers lausrlied outrioht. Children came to 



BATH. 277 

tlie gateways and snickered. Tlie nsual super- 
fiuity of street gamin shrieked and whistled in 
shrill glee. They attempted to form in line, as rear- 
guard. Ballad had to be temporarily abandoned 
to his fate, as Boston plied the whip lightly about 
more responsive legs and ankles. 

It is never the mocking jeers or the derisive 
laughter of the class below one which really hurts. 
What we term our own world alone has the power 
to inflict the deepest pain. What was really' hard 
to l)ear were the suppressed smiles of the staid 
dowagers and the more open mirth of the large- 
hatted young ladies, who were out taking their 
late afternoon drive ; for Bath at all seasons of the 
year, it appeared, is the abode of fashion. At the 
end of a half-hour I began to feel oppressively 
warm. 

" Boston, ■would yon mind holding the whip ? 
I think he'll go now without being scourged all 
the time ; the paving-stones seem to help him." 

Once free, it was the most natural thing in the 
world to take to the sidewalk. Once there, it 
was the work of an instant to open a parasol. 
I had a comfortahle sense now of having returned 
to the outward decencies of life. I even looked in 



278 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

at the shop windows, and took a flitting review of 
the Bath fashions. But in a weak moment I looked 
back. 

Boston was still leading Ballad by the bit. Both 
were dusty, weary, and dejectedly travel-worn. 
The rubber cover was white with the pulverized 
macadam of the roadway. The bags were lopping 
over, and the umbrellas were sprawling about as if 
just recovering from an orgie. It was, in truth, 
a most disreputable-looking trap. In another in- 
stant I had returned to my post. One look at 
Boston's face, and remorse and contrition tri- 
umphed. I flew at the bags with that ardor which 
is born of repentance. 

" At least I can carry these ; it can't be very far 
now. Do you think he will last another half- 
hour ? " 

Boston was merciful. His quiver was full, but 
he did not make use of even his tiniest arrow. 
He could not, however, wholly conceal the smile 
which came when I resumed my place at Ballad's 
side, thus publicly acknowledging my renewal of 
relationship with them. 

The remainder of the journey through the slip- 
pery, muddy Bath streets was accomplished under 



BATH. 279 

agonies of calculation. Was it best to urge Bal- 
lad on to the hotel, and would he hold together 
as a whole ; or would it be wiser to have him 
and the carriage part company, and place both 
under shelter at the nearest hostelry, while we 
proceeded on our way ? Some latent potentiality 
of will-force must have come to the rescue of 
our poor worn-out beast ; for in spite of repeated 
slippings and fallings, in spite of renewed ex- 
pression of his overmastering desire to lie down 
and be at rest, Ballad did nevertheless reach the 
imposing fac^ade of the Grand Pump Room Hotel. 
It was one of those moments when the sense of 
deliverance is strong enough to assume, uncon- 
sciously, the form of a vague prayerful utterance. 

In entering a city we had returned to all the 
stirring activities of city life. Bath was so real a 
city that it actually possessed horse-cars. Since 
leaving London we had been as free from their 
monotonous jingling as one can hope to be in a 
world now bent on rapid locomotion ; but here 
again were these ugliest and most useful of con- 
veyances, as crowded with citizens as is compatible 
with an Englishman's sense of justice. 

We decided that Bath, in spite of its English- 



280 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

looking horse-cars, was the most foreign-looking 
city we had seen on English soil. It had a sur- 
prisingly continental air. It had the charm of the 
unforeseen, the attraction of the unexpected. Who 
would have thought of building a city in so small 
a valley, — a valley so narrow that its streets must 
needs run up the hills, like vines along a lattice ? 
The least serious-minded inhabitant Avould have 
laughed such a plan to scorn. Yet here it is, — 
this charming, audacious lovely little city, — lying 
as contentedly in its valley as a rose in the hollow 
of a cup. Tlie hills appear to step directly out of 
its streets. The streets, nothing daunted, climb 
diligently after them, till at a distance the land- 
scape ends by describing those amazing perspec- 
tives so abundantly introduced by Albrecht Durer 
into his drawings, where hill and city seem about 
to overwhelm the subjects in the foreground. 
Here are the same quaint juxtapositions, — the 
carefully tilled patches of ground, interspersed with 
stiff facades, and a spire now and then to break 
the uniformity. In Bath this combination of alti- 
tudes and depressions is finely alternated with the 
majestic asi)cct of the remoter hills. 

The street life of the city has a compelling 



BATH 281 

magnetic attraction. One's walks become a suc- 
cession of surprises and discoveries. No one street 
is like another. If one thoroughfare be on a com- 
parative level, the next will seem to run straight 
up into the sky, or will take an abrupt French 
leave, disappearing round a corner to plunge into 
some subterranean depth. The question of just how 
much there is of interest for the tourist in Bath 
comes, in the end, to depend very much on whether 
or not he is a good walker. One may safely intrust 
one's self to the more luxurious methods of loco- 
motion, for a reviewing of the fine panoramic 
effects of the outlying hills ; but to learn all the 
secrets which this bewildering little city holds, 
one must have the strength and the ardor of the 
pedestrian. 

We were waiting for the brake to be made, and 
also to see what effect a temporary rest might 
have upon Ballad. In the mean time our leisure 
was employed in making a number of interesting 
discoveries. Among other curiosities, we had 
stumbled on a nest of enticing little alley-ways in 
the older portion of the town. Dark, mysterious- 
looking passages, and queer, quaint worn steps 
led into still quainter streets ; a whole serial, in 



282 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

fact, of old-time fragments and historic suggcstive- 
ness we found could be picked up in instalments 
along these out-of-the-way paths. Houses and 
streets seemed made to order for the most lurid 
tragedy-novelist's imaginative requirements. Mys- 
terious disappearances could be effected along 
these murderous-looking streets with a turn of the 
hand, as it were, without even the usual formality 
of a trap-door. The houses, built on top of one 
another, looked as if hung out to dry on the hill- 
sides ; the secrets they held being doubtless in 
need of an airing. At twilight or in the dark of 
early night the most innocent shape, as it flitted 
through i\\Q evil-minded gloom, took on a tragic 
aspect ; its very shadow seemed to pursue it with 
fiendish intent. Such spectral charms made the 
more modern parts of the city — the severer 
fa9ades of the Royal Crescent — seem a fable. 
In these dingy byways the past lost its vague 
dimness, and seemed alive again, as if reborn 
under the touch of some conjurer's wand. 

Under the glare of broad noonday still another 
phase of this older city's life revealed itself. As 
if to keep the streets and houses in countenance, a 
remnant of hardier, coarser England appeared to 



BATH. 283 

have survived the transformations of the last few 
centuries. To look on the strong brutalized faces 
of the men who fill these streets with gossiping 
groups at twilight, gathering in front of the open 
butchers' stalls, where the blood-flowing on warm 
days in no wise appears to disturb the sensibilities 
of the hardy stomachs ; to listen to the men's 
deep rough laughter and their burly speech, — is to 
realize that England, like all old countries, hides 
in her forgotten pockets survivors still of that tough 
mediseval people, the roysterers of King Henry 
Vin.'s reign or the fighters of Elizabethan days, 
to whom contact with the more brutal sides of life 
presents no horrors. Nerves and sensibilities are 
a modern growth. We of the nineteenth century 
are the higlily strung instruments, fitted to be 
played upon by steam-whistles, railways, mowing- 
machines, pistol-shots, and the racking noise of 
great cities. In our day ingenious man is the in- 
ventor of his own torture. In the Middle Ages 
the pleasing task of testing to what lengths human 
endurance could go was wisely left to the rack and 
to persecution-workers. Outside of dungeons and 
dark council-chambers, life was lived with keen 
animal ferocity of enjoyment. In looking on 



284 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

this remnant of that earlier system, in gazing on 
these giant frames and ox-like faces, with features 
and expression born of strong appetites and the 
latent strength that comes of surplus muscle, one 
is led to conjecture whether, after all, our modern 
diseases of exposed nerves and over-active sensibil- 
ities are not questionable gains. But the man who 
is great enough to turn back to form himself on 
these robust models, and who will contribute his 
experiments in primitive brutality to our inert age, 
is still to be born. The modern reformer is no 
better than the rest of us ; he persists in believing 
in the future, — that poor over-mortgaged country, 
that issues to each one of us such unlimited letters 
of credit. 

In sharp contrast with the physical hardihood to 
be seen in the Bath slums is the invalidism that 
from time immemorial has been the raisoti d^etre 
of Bath. Fashionable Bath is nothing if not the 
"city of the sick man." All the life of the little 
city localizes itself about the springs and the baths. 
The invalid's throne is his Bath chair, and he is 
the most peripatetic of monarchs. In whatever 
part of the town one may chance to be, one meets 
two lines of invalids, — a slow solemn procession of 



BATH. 285 

believers going up in hope and faith to the Temple 
of Hjgeia, the Grand Pump Room, and another li.ne 
of pilgrims returning from the same. In the open 
square in the heart of the city, on which tlie Pump 
Room and the Abbey Church face, the little army 
of sufferers meet to saunter, lounge, and gossij). 
The Bath chairs are drawn up in line against the 
buildings facing on the square. With their hoods 
open, they look not unlike so many yawning 
graves. He who enters one, indeed, appears to 
have already opened tacit negotiations with tbe 
dread monster. But Englishmen would not be 
Britons if they failed in heroism even under the 
hood of one of these dismal hearses. The foxes 
of pain and anguish may be gnawing their vitals, 
but English pluck keeps bravery well up in front. 
To watch gouty and rheumatic England sipping 
relief from the steaming glasses in the Pump 
Room is a lesson in heroism. It is a regiment 
of soldiers performing a drill under orders. It 
is only the limp that betrays any evidence of 
suffering. The faces are as impassive and as 
immobile as so many masks. 

On the faces of the wives and daughters of these 
heroic martyrs a fine observer might detect quite an- 



286 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

other expression. It is the look of those who also 
suffer and endure ; but the mingled pain and cour- 
age which compose it is of a very different charac- 
ter. It is one of enforced submission. Even a 
hero must draw his line of repression somewhere. 
An Englishman considerately draws it at his own 
family. The world must be met with a Spartan 
face, but the true Briton provides himself with a 
family })illow on which to do his private groaning. 
Thus gout is turned into a direct spiritualizing 
agency, and the submissive expression of angelic 
patience and sweetness which the rest of the world 
so admires in English wives is a product of home 
manufacture conducted on the strictest principles 
of economy. 

In a circular recess of the Grand Pump Room is 
a statue of one of the two monarchs who have 
made Bath famous. This one is the statue of its 
last and uncrowned king, Richard Nash. In the 
King's Bath yonder is the effigy of its first ruler, 
King Bladud. This latter is doubtless a most 
accurate reproduction of the original, since beneath 
the statue runs an inscription to the effect that 
" he was the founder of these baths 863 years be- 
fore Christ." The statue of one kino; is aureoled 



BATH. 287 

with legend and mystery ; the effigy of the other 
with the halo which belongs to leadership, by what- 
ever name it is known. The two kings between 
them mark the Alpha and the Omega of Bath gran- 
deur. The periods are nearly two thousand years 
apart ; yet, with the exception of a brief and tem- 
porary period of illumination, Bath may be said 
only truly to have lired at these two widely distant 
eras. Its one other period of fitful activity was 
during the Roman occupation. 

It is impossible to resist at times the impulse 
to insist on the analogy existing between features 
and character, not alone in man, but in that more 
mysterious portion of the universe which we call 
Nature. The history of some countries seems 
written on their landscape. That cities should 
reflect the character and the lives of the men who 
inhabit them is scarcely to be wondered at, since, 
as muscle is carved by mind, so is the outward 
aspect of a city determined by the life that peo- 
ples its thoroughfares. Nature, at times, seems 
also to lend herself to this mute handwriting. To 
look, for instance, on these Somersetshire hills 
about Bath, — at their sudden depressions and their 
impulsive heights of exaltation, — at the sinuous. 



288 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

variable, wayward little river running through its 
valley, at the sharp contrast existing between the 
richly wooded uplands and the naked barrenness of 
some of the hill-tops, at the mingled secrecy and 
abandonment of the landscape, the confidence of llie 
forests and the betrayal of the open meadows, — 
is to divine that the adventures in experience of 
such a landscape have been a history richly di- 
versified by incident and romance. The prose of 
fact for once comes to sustain the frail poetry of 
intuition. 

Bath owes much of its varied and extraordinary 
history to its exceptionable situation. Geograph- 
ically, it had been gloriously endowed at its birth. 
Besides its beauty it has possessed an indefinable 
charm for mankind. Some cities possess such a 
magnetic potency. Man appears to divine their 
existence wherever he may dwell. He can no 
more resist seeking them out, dwelling in them, 
and beautifying them, than he can escape the fated 
fascination of any other of the irresistible forces of 
the universe. Bath has been from the dawn of 
history such a little magnet. Men have sought her 
out, here in her deep hollow, begirt by her thermal 
springs ; they have brought their gods and their 



BA TIL 289 

families ; they have built baths and temples ; they 
have lived and loved and roamed among her hills 
and along her lovely valleys ; and then they have 
as incontinently deserted her. Others came to 
awaken the dead and forsaken beauty, to clothe 
her anew in loveliness, only in their turn to leave 
her to ruin and decay. Thus did those dwellers 
come, during the Stone Age, whose remains and 
ruins in Claverton and Lansdown Beacon prove 
this whole district to have been densely populated 
at least a thousand years before Christ. Thus came 
King Bladud and his train ; then the Romans ; 
then during the great ecclesiastical period the 
monks and bishops. Again came desertion ; and 
finally Beau Nash appeared to put the little king- 
dom of the springs on a sure footing of order and 
established sovereignty. 

Geoffrey of Monmouth's monkish chronicle re- 
lates, in a bit of pleasing narration, the first known 
discovery of the healing properties of the Bath 
waters. A king's son, Bladud by name, being 
afflicted with leprosy, was forced to turn vagabond. 
His father, Brutus, was the son of that hero whose 
wanderings Virgil sang, and who after the destruc- 
tion of Troy came westward and conquered Albion. 

19 



290 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

But afflicted Bladud, for all he was a great 
king's heir, could find no nobler occupation, cursed 
as he was, tlian swine-herding. His pigs Avere, 
however, gifted with those phenomenal qualities 
common to pigs tended by royalty in distress. 
They in their turn, catching their keeper's terrible 
malady, proceeded to repair with great promptness 
to the hot springs in the morass in Avhich Baih 
now stands. After a few baths, taken without the 
formality of professional consultation, the pigs 
became cured of their disorder. Their royal 
keeper, having had the benefit of a philosophic 
course at the schools of Athens, had acquired suffi- 
cient logic to enable him to make the following 
conclusion : " If the springs have cured my pigs, 
why will they not cure me ? " Whereupon he 
promptly plunged into the morass. He emerged 
as cured as liis swine. In consequence of which 
happy miracle, Bladud was enabled to make his 
bow at court. With the virtue so freely attrib- 
uted to legendary heroes, the chronicle proceeds 
to narrate that Bladud inaugurated his own 
reign by building in the morass a grand city, 
plentifully supplied with baths for both rich and 
poor. 



BATH. 291 

TVhetlier or not the " grand city " survived till 
Rome came to take possession, is not authenti- 
cated. Rome, however, was sufficiently opulent to 
supply her own luxuries. This invigorating moun- 
tain air once sniffed by a Roman nostril ; this 
lovely landscape once lit upon by the all-discerning 
Roman eye, — and the Roman knew a good thing 
when he saw it if ever a man did, — assured to 
Bath, for a century or two at least, the protection 
of its dominion. The charming hills were covered, 
as if by a miracle, with costly villas ; parks were 
laid out, and terraces constructed to delight the eye 
and the taste of the pedestrian ; roadways were 
constructed over the hills to the sea, along which 
Britons and American tourists still travel; the city 
itself was beautified with houses and temples and 
baths splendid enough to tempt the invalid across 
seas and continents, — for the distance from Rome 
to these hot springs of Bath was, after all, some- 
what of a journey for a gentleman in Trajan's 
time. But then, what will not a man do if his liver 
be out of order ? The Roman, however, it must be 
remembered, above all other travellers anticipated 
the nineteenth century in the ease and comfort of 
his travellino; arrano-ements. He carried, so to 



292 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

speak, all Rome with him. He had only to unpack 
his Saratoga to feel entirely at home. Here in 
Bath, for instance, he soon found himself in a 
miniature Rome. If he needed to pass an hour 
in worship, he had the beautiful Temple of Sul- 
Minerva round the corner. If he repaired to the 
baths, he found as complete and as varied a club 
life as at home. He would hear all the morning's 
gossip in the Frigidarium, and in the Eliothe- 
sium he could be quite as certain as at Rome of 
being properly oiled and perfumed. Later in the 
day, a very fair contingent of fashionable Rome 
could be met taking the air along these Bath hills. 
Altogether, a Roman might do a worse thing than 
to settle here. 

At a stone's-throw from our hotel, closely 
wedged in among the tall modern houses of the 
present city, lies a mass of ruins. One looks down 
upon an apparently undistinguishable medley, — 
on broken fragments of columns, on grand bases 
separated from their shafts, upon bits of richly 
sculptured capitals, and traceried cornices. These 
shattered fragments are all that remain to make 
this lost page of Roman history a vivid reality. 
Archaeologists point in triumph to the unmistak- 







Old Roman Baths. Bath. 



Page 292. 



BA TH. 293 

a'jle traces of all the parts of these once groat and 
beautiful baths, — to the leaden pipes which still 
exist, showing the entire plan of its heating appa- 
ratus ; to the green pools where the gold-fish still 
show their scaly golden armor, descendants of 
those finny tribes that the Romans ])laced here ; to 
the votive tablets and coins which the grateful had 
hung on the walls as tributes of their cure. But nei- 
ther the historian nor the archaeologist can do more 
than does this green sluggish pool of water which 
washes the broad mouldy steps of the bath leading 
into it : this shadowy pool reflects two cities, — the 
one in ruins, gathered in pathetic fragments near 
its margin ; the other erect and intact above it, 
towering in the majestic solidity of the present. 
Such is the history of nations. 

When Rome fell, Roman Bath died. It came to 
life again under the reign of the mediaeval kings 
called bishops and abbots. Monks took the place 
of pagan epicureans. An abbey and a monastery 
replaced the Temple of Sul-Minerva, on that plan 
of economy which inspired the early Christians to 
make paganism serve God after its centuries of 
devotion to the devil. When the church became 
the cathedral of the diocese, John of Villula built 



294 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

a Norman structure befitting its dignity. In his 
time Bath was the bishop's seat. With the re- 
moval of that throne to Wells in the latter part 
of the same century, the Abbey Church fell into 
ruin and decay. The present abbey was rebuilt in 
the fifteenth century by Bishop King. Something 
of the grandeur of the former edifice may be in- 
ferred from the fact that this present Perpendicular 
building, of very respectable size, occupies only the 
site of the Norman nave. From the banks of the 
river, the abbey's embellished turrets, its pierced 
parapets and the pinnacled transepts group effec- 
tively with the surrounding plume-like trees and 
the city's picturesque sky-line. But this abbey, 
in common with other less complete buildings, 
is best seen at a distance. Like certain friend- 
ships, its excellences are heightened when seen in 
perspective. 

The next and last page of the history of Bath 
reads like a fairy tale. It is centred in the life 
of one man, — an ideal prince of adventurers, who, 
it is true, never ascended a throne, and yet ruled 
as autocratically as any despot ; who discovered, 
early in life, that in order to command men it is 
only necessary to guide their pleasures ; that royalty 



BA TU. 295 

will make quite as obedient subjects as commoners 
if it discover a monarch strong enough to issue 
tlie fiat of Draconian laws. Never was there a 
sovereignty, founded on such fictitious usurpation 
of power, so powerful and prosperous as the fifty 
years' reign of Beau Nash's kingship in Bath. 
This solemn adjuster of trifles, this master of the 
ceremonies of polite life, this rigid arbiter of fash- 
ion, who took dandyism as seriously as statesmen 
take statescraft, did for Bath what neither Rome 
nor bishop nor kingly visitors had been able to 
achieve. He found Bath a city of dung-hills ; he 
left it the beautiful and finished city which we 
now behold. In 1631 physicians did not dare 
recommend their patients to take the waters 
internally ; "for the streets are dung-hills, slaugh- 
ter-houses, and pigsties ; . . • the baths are bear- 
gardens, where both sexes bathe promiscuously, 
while the passers-by pelt them with dead dogs, 
cats, and pigs," writes a certain Dr. Jordan. 
Another writer adds: "The roads are so bad it is 
scarce possible to get to the city in the winter. 
Every house is covered with thatch, and at every 
door hangs a manger to feed the horses, asses, etc., 
which bring coal and provisions into the town ; and 



296 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

notliiiig but obscenity, ribaldry, and licentiousness 
prevail." Even ten years later, when Queen Anne 
made her famous entry into Bath, the city was still 
notoriously squalid, and the pleasures of the town 
were of the coarsest order. But Richard Nash, 
Esq., was a better ruler than stupid Queen Anne. 
When he came the face of things was changed. 
First he reorganized the pleasures, and then he re- 
constructed the city. The town, as we now know 
it, was either almost entirely the work of his direct 
energies, or the improvements were due to the im- 
petus Avhich the radical changes he wrought in- 
spired. The new and enlarged streets, the churches 
and chapels, the Guildhall, the Grand Pump Room, 
the Stall Street baths, the numerous benevolent 
institutions, were the direct offspring of one man's 
genius for the organization of the pleasures of life. 
He may have been, as Goldsmitli calls him in his 
inimitable portraiture, " the little king of a little 
people ; " but the puerilities of his aim are dignified 
into grandeur in view of such wide-reaching and 
substantial results. The lesson of Nash's life is 
that it furnishes such a commentary on the relative 
values of human endeavor. How rarely are the 
noblest purposes and most heroic self-sacrifice 



BATH. 297 

rewarded as were tlie selfish petty amljitions of this 
man ! Such may come to be the true secret of 
successful sovereignty, — that a prince should de- 
scend to the human popular level of presiding 
over quadrilles and issuing his fiat for the height 
of shirt-collars and the color of waistcoats, — to 
lead the fashion, in a word, both in manners and 
in dress, and thus make existence for simpler men 
a less expensive outlay of mental capital. 

The sky is full of signs that the world will grow 
in wisdom with the coming centuries ; but the 
world, be it ever so wise, will always have this 
point in sympathy with sheep, — whenever a leader 
arises it will be quite certain to follow. 

In the mean time the brake had been finished, 
and Ballad, impatient of cures, having devoured 
all the oats within reach, had begun a species of 
refined cannibalism on his own person. He was 
eating his head off, the hostler said. 



298 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE DRIVE TO WELLS. — AN ENCHANTED NIGHT. 

" I ^HE brake worked like a charm. It worked so 
well that we began to feel as if we had per- 
sonally invented it. We experienced something 
of that joy which comes to a successful patentee. 
Ballard trotted merrily down the steepest hills ; 
or rather, the merry trotting began after he had 
discovered the brake. At first, as a horse of en- 
lightened intelligence, he received the evidences of 
its working-power with fine incredulity. At the 
top of the first hill he promptly reined himself in. 
In any other horse this self-assertive action might 
have been termed balking ; but Ballad was too 
sensitive to outside influences to be classed among 
ti'ue balkers. A few caressive supplications, and 
he was induced to make a venture downwards. 
Then behold his amazement ! — half of the weight 
of the carriage lifted and the vehicle held back, 
grappled as if by a hand of iron ! He was as free 



THE DRIVE TO WELLS. 299 

from the load behind him now as if he had been 
on an independent flying expedition. Only the 
miracle, alas ! was so far behind, so altogether 
hopelessly in his rear, that there was no chance of 
his ever being able to investigate it with satisfac- 
tory thoroughness. He had no choice but to walk, 
or rather to run, by faith. In view of our latter-day 
scepticism, it was beautiful to see how admirably a 
blind acceptance of hidden laws may work. 

To get away from Bath was almost as serious a 
matter, in the amount of hill-climbing to be done, 
as it had been to reach the low-lying city. Just 
how deep is the valley in which the city rests, and 
how steep and high are the surrounding hills, can 
only be justly estimated by those who drive or by 
the pedestrian. As usual, we had not gone far 
before we found ourselves belonging to the latter 
class of journeyers. The brake. Ballad had been 
quick to discover, did not help him any the more 
in going up the long hills. He therefore speedily 
gave us to understand that a closer companionship, 
one which brought us nearer to his heart and head, 
would be more to his taste. 

On this occasion we had determined to try a 
little rebellion on our part. Only recently, just out 



300 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

of Longleat, wc had stumbled on a way of making 
the slow up-hill half-hours delightful. In rum- 
maging in one of the bags for a remote and se- 
cretive pocket-flask, on our way to Frome, we had 
stumbled on a pocket edition of Shakspeare 
instead. 

" Give it to me. It is a gift from the gods. Now 
we have something for the up-hill work. I can read 
a play as we walk along, — something we both know 
fairly well ; then we '11 drop it at the top, when the 
trotting begins, and begin again at the next long 
hill. Wiiat a find ! " I had exclaimed. 

The plan had worked as only a charm can. No 
more tedious dull moments, Avhen the scenes in the 
landscape dragged, or the sun was too ardent a 
lover, or the wind too miserly to blow, or the hour 
just one short of starvation. Here were balm, con- 
tentment, and inspiration for the dull eiitracfes. 

On how many hill-tops had we not left a brace 
of those immortal lovers, whose woes and whose 
tearful joys are a part of our own intenser ex- 
periences ! Yiola, gay Rosalind and her Orlando, 
Egypt's dark enchantress and doomed Anthony, 
or Romeo and Juliet, breasting their stormy sea 
of love, — such was the wondrous company we had 



THE DRIVE TO WELLS. 301 

conjured up as fellow-travellers. Eveii Avlien the 
book was laid aside, thrust in between the two 
carriage cushions, in readiness to be pulled out at 
the next ascent, it was still the echo of that melo- 
dious passion and the rhythm of that ecstatic verse 
that filled the trees and was wafted towards us on 
the light summer air. This reading of Shakspeare 
amid the scenes and the land that he loved so well, 
whose fair and finished charms seem to fill the 
airy atmosphere of his work as do the violet 
skies of Greece each line of Homer, made the 
great English bard and his glorious company of 
immortal heroes new and strangely realizable. As 
the eyes of the spectators at Athens could sweep 
past the stage out to the Piraeus, to the sea that 
Sophocles made his heroes apostrophize, so here 
the great framework was still left, — that gay and 
smiling background on which has figured so many 
a tearful comedy, so many a tender traged3\ 
How many forests of Arden had we not passed! 
Over the velvet of Longleat or under the silvery 
Arundel foliage, surely it must have been over such 
turf that tripped Titania's fantastic court. Nor do 
all the dramatis personce seem dead, living only in 
these glowing pages. Each rustic we met seemed 



S02 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

to have in 'him the making of a boor or a clown. 
Dogberrys and Shallows we were quite certain we 
had seen again and again at the wayside inns and 
at tavern doors. 

May not this, perhaps, be taken as the highest 
test of genius, — that it shall so transfix, on an 
imperishable canvas of truth, the types truest to 
its time and country that the portraiture shall re- 
main forever an immortal picture of the land and 
the people ? That genius which has not so painted 
the life about him as to make it forever true, so tliat 
so long as the people endure as a race or a nation 
the world shall know the people through the work 
and the work through the people, has not, I think, 
touched the apogee of human greatness in creative 
power. 

Ballad, being merely a horse of talent, quite 
naturally could see nothing in genius except that 
it was very much in his w^ay. (If Ballad had 
been a man and an author, he would have belonged 
to the modern American school of realists ; he 
hated things he could not understand.) He soon 
developed very decided objections to Shakspeare. 
Whenever he saw that small green book come out 
of its hiding-place he knew his most formidable- 



THE DRIVE TO WELLS. 303 

rival was about to take possession of us. He pro- 
ceeded to put into practice a series of deep strategic 
manoeuvres. He began by suddenly developing 
a fancy for running up the hills. He slackened 
his speed, it is true, as he neared the crest, but not 
long enough for the hated rival to be drawn forth. 

On this particular occasion chance and the loose 
morality that governs the inanimate world came to 
his rescue. " Cymbeline," the play we had nearly 
finished before entering Bath, ]^iad gone astray. 

" Have you looked in the Amusement Bag ? " I 
asked of Boston, as he continued an unrewarded 
search through the various hand-pieces. The bags, 
early in the trip, we found were cryingly in need 
of being christened. There were five. Each one 
more or less resembled its fellow in size and com- 
plexion. They came, in the end, quite naturally to 
take the name of their contents. There was the 
Amusement Bag, full of the books, papers, maps, 
and one small and as yet untouched pack of 
playing-cards. There were also the Medicine 
Chest ; the Upholstery Department, with the toilet 
and night-gear ; the Restaurant, which ministered 
to temporary physical wants; and the Wine 
Cellar. 



304 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

In no one of these over-full receptacles had 
" Cymbeline " hidden itself. Ballad, therefore, had 
his way with us. We cheerily took to the hills. 

With every upward step the prospect broadened. 
To look over the land was to overlook a great sea 
of hills. In the valleys nestled the farms and the 
villages ; on the hill-tops bristled a tall spire here 
and there, a qnivering spear flashing in the sun- 
light. The crests of the hills were, however, for 
the most part unbroken surfaces of woodland or 
tilled meadows, so that the rhythm of their har- 
monious elevations was unspoiled. 

The whole glorious prospect was splendidly 
lighted by an August sun, — a late afternoon sun. 

Experience had taught us that it was greatly to 
our advantage to make engagements with twilight 
effects. To start somewhat late in the afternoon, 
that we might have the sunset, the long twilight 
hour, and later on clear moonlight, — if the lunar 
gentleman could be counted upon to appear, — 
this was the ideal driving-time. Wells was at 
just the right distance from Bath to make this 
arrangement feasible. 

We had started only a little after three by the 
Grand Pump Room's stately clock, yet here on 



THE DRIVE TO WELLS. 305 

the hrlls, an hour and a half later, the shadows 
were already lengthening. 

During the days of our town life, whilst we had 
been gaping at shop-windows, Nature, we found, 
had gone on steadily perfecting her summer taslcs. 
At the end of five short days great changes had 
come upon the landscape. The grain-fields, which 
we had left still green and only timidly yellowing, 
were now quite brazenly golden. The wheat had 
even had time to turn coquette. She was so 
yellow a blond she could dare to wear poppies in 
her hair. The trees also looked fuller and more 
mature, as if to prove that even in five short days 
a good deal may be learned in the arts of sym- 
metry and proportion. Their trunks looked un- 
commonly rich and brown, as the sun, dipping 
westward, sent broad, strong beams of light 
through the woods. 

There had been a good stretch of fairly level 
road. Soon we came to a village. It was none 
too soon. The timepiece of our vigorous appetites 
had begun to set the hour of ravenous hunger. 
We stopped at the first little tavern, which hap- 
pened also to be the only one in the straggling 
village. We decided to rest for an hour, that 

20 



306 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Ballad's supper and our own might have a peaceful 
digestion. 

The Restaurant had been plenteously filled before 
leaving Bath. We had no mind to trust ourselves 
to the problematical casualties of roadside-tavern 
fare. We proceeded at once to make an impro- 
vised dining-table of the box-seat of the carriage. 
A clean napkin gave our feast the appearance 
of a fashionable repast on race-day. Ham and 
chicken sandwiches with some crisp leaves of 
lettuce between, some of the famous Bath buns 
and the pastry puffs for which the city is noted, 
topped off with some foaming glasses of beer, — a 
delicate compliment to the tavern-keeper's vintage, 
although our own Wine Cellar boasted some Cha- 
teau Yqueur of a classic date, — made a tempting 
and wholesome meal. 

We did not long enjoy our feast alone. At the 
end of five minutes most of the village were pres- 
ent. When we arrived the Tillage had been as 
dead as only an inland rural village can be. 
The opening of our lunch-basket was tlie signal 
for its brisk awakening. By the time we liad 
spread the napkin the entire village — to a man 
and the latest suckling infant — was present. 



THE DRIVE TO WELLS. 307 

Not being royalty, eating thus conspicuously in 
public miglit easily bave proved embarrassing ; 
but tbc evident enjoyment of tbe on-lookers took 
off all edge of discomfort. It was a lesson in the 
uses of levees and of tlieir effect on the masses. 
No lover watching his mistress's rosy lips sipping 
golden Tokay could have evinced a more vivacious 
delight in dainty food than did our cordon of 
rustics. When we broke into the crumbling feath- 
ery pastry every countenance expressed pleased 
approval. As we drained the beer-mugs there 
was an audible smacking of lips. Naturally such 
delicate compliments to our supper deserved their 
reward. When we had packed the Restaurant we 
had not expected to feed a village ; but never did 
a few Bath buns and tarts prove the disputed facts 
in a certain great miracle to be incontestably 
true. 

Even the infants partook. A sweet, shy-eyed 
woman had come out of the tavern door. She held 
in her arms a young babe. Her appearance was 
the signal for several wandering babies, old enough 
to toddle, to gather about her skirts, that they 
might with more safety direct their greedy asking 
little glances upward. Two Bath buns made the 



308 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

happiest family ever seen out of a show. The 
mother's portion was shared by the infant. 

" Are all these children yours ? " I asked as she 
stood smiling in their midst. 

Slie blushed a vivid crimson as she looked shyly 
askance at the row of curly heads about her knees. 
" Yes, mum, please, mum ; " and she dropped a 
courtesy.' "There's five of 'em, mum, I do be- 
lieve," — as if counting them were an altogether 
novel experience. Then, emboldened, she came 
nearer, and took courage to look me full in the 
face. It was delightful to look down into her eyes, 
— the shy, soft, maternal eyes. " You see, mum, 
it 's a long family, mum, and they came so fast I 
don't remember rightly. There 's AVillie, now, he 's 
the oldest ; he 's off mostly to the vicarage, — he 
sings in the choir and does chores. But won't you 
be feeling tired, mum, an' come in and take a 
seat ? " 

" Thank you so very much, but we are going off 
presently." 

" You have come a long ways, maybe, — from dif- 
ferent parts," she still continued, as if she felt, now 
that the ice was broken, that tallying to a stranger 
was after all not so terrifying an undertaking. 



THE DRIVE ro WELLS. 309 

The other bystanders looked at lier in nndis^Miised 
admh-ation. Perhaps they had not suspected her 
hidden talent for dialogue. 

" Oh yes," I answered her, to encourage so brave 
a venture ; " we have come a long distance, — from 
London and from across the seas, — from New 
York." 

" Yes ; I said from different parts," she replied, 
not to be put down with any such overwhelming 
distancfs. They evidently conveyed no meaning 
to her mind. Her eye did not lighten ; there was 
only an obstinate tightening of the facial muscles. 
Her geographical limits were bounded by the hills ; 
but she was a woman, and was outwardly not to be 
put in the wrong. It was ver}^ evident, however, 
that we had improved our position as adventurous 
travellers with the male members of the group. 
They all gathered closer, and began to take an 
interest in Ballad and the trap. 

At the outskirts of the village, as we drove off, 
there stood a lovely vicarage. It had the straight 
parapet and the mullioned Tudor casements, with 
tlie diamond-leaded glass of the period, to proclaim 
its three centuries of anticpiity. The moss and 
the ivy had had so many years to weave their 



310 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

mantle of green over the door-lintels and the rain- 
stained facade that they had ended hy clothing 
the entire establishment. A boy's voice through 
the shrubbery rang out clear and sweet. It was 
a snatch of some old glee, with quaint old-time 
changes in it. 

" It is the choir-boy, Boston, doing a song as he 
tidies up the barn. How pure his voice is, and how 
true ! It has the ring of a skylark. And how the 
song fits into the scene, does n't it ? It is like a 
madrigal to that Lady of Light." 

For the west was aflame. A great glory of 
light filled the western horizon, spreading in 
fainter tints up to the very zenith. The land- 
scape lay beneath, calm, peaceful, serene, as only 
an English landscape lies under a tinted sky, its 
velvet cheek scarcely a shade deeper in tone. The 
sun meanwhile was rolling up his day-canvas. 
The scene was being set for moonlight effects. 
According to the most approved modern devices 
for stage-shifting one scene Avas melting impercep- 
tibly into the next. The sun, being an older and 
very experienced hand, was making a series of pic- 
tures of each point of transition. We had had a 
blue earth and a blue sky, a paler daffodil firma- 



AN ENCHANTED NIGHT. 311 

ment, and a darker, greener landscape ; and now 
there was that rich light in the west, and in the 
east a pale yellow moon. For one brief moment 
the two chief actors in the scene faced each other. 
The sun gave his rival a long, luminous, splendid 
stare ; then he dropped behind his breastwork of 
hills. Slowly the moon mounted to take serene 
possession of the night ; slowly the color faded out 
of the west ; slowly the earth took on her sombre 
evening garments ; slowly the woods thickened 
into darkness, the bluish greens in the meadows 
turning into warm browns and blackened purples. 
Then, as the moon rose higher in the rich, dusky 
summer sky, the breasts of the hills whitened to 
silvery grayness, the plains became a lake of 
misty light, and earth and sky seemed floating in 
a wondrous illumined halo. 

For several liours we lived in this silver world. 
We were still toiling up the Mendip Hills, and 
our road took us into the fairy upper fields of 
light. The moonlight streamed into the depths 
of the forests, making the far distances as bright 
as day. Above us the hills towered, their heights 
white with light; while the nearer hollows were 
as dark and deep as wells. 



312 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Then quite suddenly the descent began. The 
road now was as broad as a wide boulevard. It 
wound in beautiful, sinuous coils about the moun- 
tain-side. As we looked down into the valleys 
below, we saw a fantastically lighted, half-obscured 
landscape. The mountain-sides were swathed in 
mist, — a gauzy veil that coiled its light tis- 
sues about the jagged rocks. At a turn in the 
road, the yawning abysses were exchanged for 
brilliant, clearly cut bits of woodland scenery, 
as frankly revealing themselves as meadows at 
high noon. We Avere in the midst of all the 
stillness and the mystery peculiar to high alti- 
tudes. The noises of the night were hushed. 
In this enchanted region not even a' fairy was 
astir. 

Finally, like stars shining through a misty sky, 
the distant lights of Wells pierced the illumined 
gauze that covered the valleys. As we neared the 
town, there was no break in the enchanted spell 
of beauty. Still the moon shone clear in high 
heaven ; still the trees were clothed in light as 
in a heavenly garment ; still our broad roadway 
was a path of shining silver. It led us into the 
damp and misty valley, where the wandering night 



AN ENCHANTED NIGHT. 313 

air was fragrant with perfume ; it led us past 
the suburban garden and the whitened villas, and 
finally it ceased and became a little narrow cobble- 
paved street. 

And this was Wells. 



314 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

"WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 

^ I ^HE little city was under the spell. It lay 
folded, entranced, in the garment of warm 
white light. The houses did not seem quite real, 
as we passed them, wrapped in that soft mellow 
radiance. The stillness made the dream more 
vivid. The silent, white little city neither moved 
nor stirred as we drove through its sleeping 
streets. 

Suddenly there came the flare of lamp and candle 
light to make broad streaks of dull yellow on the 
white paving-stones. It was the light from our inn. 

A woman's figure, leaning against the door-jamb, 
started forward as we drove up. When Ballad was 
brought to a halt, she was at our side to greet us 
with a smile and a soft " Good-evening." She was 
our landlady. She was a young woman, but she 
was in widow's weeds ; and her sombre draperies 
and dazzling white cap gave to her comeliness a 



WELLS, AX ENCHANTED CITY. 315 

look of distinction. It was only in keeping with 
the hour and the night, we said, that we should be 
received by a pretty, sentimental landlady, with a 
taste for moonlight revery. Her romantic turn, 
however, did not seem to have been allowed to 
interfere with a very decided genius for affairs. 
The inn was like wax ; and our supper was quite 
a little banquet. 

" Do you know that any woman who can keep 
one eye on her servants and the other on the moon 
is a being for whom I have a profound respect?" 
I announced to Boston, as we unfolded our snowy 
napkins. 

" Would you mind my making it a trifle warmer 
than respect ? I feel a positive affection for her 
just now. This is the best bouillon I have tasted 
on English soil," he replied. 

In spite of its excellence we both felt we were 
eating the meal in more or less of a trance. For 
the windows were open, and the warm night aii", 
like the soft flutter of a bird's wing, caressed our 
cheeks. We were so close to the street that the 
little garden belonging to the inn, across the way, 
sent a cloud of perfume into the chamber. We 
could see the tiny fountain splashing in the moon- 



316 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

light, — a thread of diamond dewdrops glistening 
in the white night. On the bench near it some 
people were seated ; their voices stole up to us in 
pleasant, drowsy murmurs. But beyond it all, 
beyond the garden and the fountain and the trees, 
rose a wondrous sight. It was the cathedral, loom- 
ing up to heaven, cut in solid silver against the 
sky. 

" Come, let us go," I cried, pushing the table 
aside. " This is no time for eating or for swinish 
slumber. We '11 make a night of it." 

The figure leaning pensively against the inn door 
was still there as we passed out, looking unaffect- 
edly up at the moon. This time it did not move ; 
but it spoke in the soft, clear English voice, — 

" It 's a beautiful night, is it not ? Wells is so 
pretty by moonlight ! Shall you be going to the 
cathedral ? " A white hand pointed the way. 
" And be sure to see the moat, beyond the gate- 
way, yonder. It 's most lovely to-night." 

" She 's as perfect as if she 'd been made to 
order, — for us and the night," exclaimed Boston, 
in what for him was a tone of rapture. 

The low eaves of the houses made a black shadow 
for us to walk in. Then came a great gateway, 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 317 

a long- high wall, within which, stretching out to 
the borders of some lofty trees, was the grassy 
cathedral close. It lay at the feet of the cathedral 
like a whitened shroud. The trees, with their lace- 
like foliage, made the only shadows that fell upon 
the transfigured lawn. The great fa9ade of the 
cathedral rose into the sky like some fair and dis- 
embodied spirit ; it was as unreal as a phantom 
ghost. Its outlines seemed to float entranced in 
the mellow light. Then, as we came nearer, the 
vast and splendid surface resolved itself into shape 
and outline. The three low portals yawned like so 
many caverns. The columns bloomed like rounded 
limbs turned to the sun. The turrets soared aloft 
into the summer sky. But in spite of the bloom 
and the aerial lightness, there rested on the whole 
the spell of a statue-like sadness. A strange, 
quaint company covered that glowing surface. 
Earnest, saintly faces leaned out into the silver 
light. Under stone canopies, immobile as images 
of fate, stood the effigies of kings and martyrs. 
Apostles and tender women lifted upward adoring, 
pleading faces, blanched with celestial passion. 
Above, tier on tier of angels seemed to be ascend- 
ing into glory. Truly, this was the ideal cathedral 



318 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

facade. It was an open Bible of Belief, imaged in 
stone. 

Then the moon went under a light cloud ; and 
there was only a black mass in the eastern sky. 

There was light enough, however, for us to 
thread our way towards the other gateway. As 
we passed beneath its high arch, we came face to 
face with two people, — a man and a gii-1. As we 
made way for them to pass, I saw that their hands 
had been locked. She was so near that I could 
look into her eyes ; they glowed like two fiery 
stars. Was it the shadow of the white burnoose 
she wore over her head that had blanched her 
cheek to the same whiteness of passion we had 
seen on those silent faces yonder ? As they neared 
the cathedral, they stopped. The great mass was 
still in the gloom ; but the light in the sky fell 
upon the living figures. They stood for a moment, 
quite still, looking up at the stony faces ; then 
the man stooped and kissed her. 

" I am glad he did. I could n't bear to see them 
looking up at those rigid faces. It was like young- 
love gazing at renunciation. Poor things ! I hope 
it is n't a prophecy," I said ; and we crept away be- 
yond the arch, a trifle guiltily. " Boston," I could 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 319 

not help whispering, " I wish tiiey had looked at us 
instead, and taken courage. We despaired, don't 
you remember ? and I had renunciatory moods ; 
but it's been a great success, hasn't it?" 

No answer came ; but on the white flagging of 
the silent market-place a shadow etched itself in 
black. It was the Shadow of two happy people 
clasped in the lock of love. It was the image of 
crowned and wedded bliss, — the answer to that 
longing yonder, the longing of youth and hope 
and love. It was the answer of the flower to 
the bud. 

Then came an hour in pure fairy-land. The 
market-place, with its rows of silent-faced houses, 
was the last glimpse we had of the world, and its 
reminders of the realities of life. Was it, in truth, 
a real world at all, this that we had entered after 
passing beyond yonder stately gateway ? There 
was a path, it is true, that wound in and out among 
noble trees ; but to what, if not to a realm of pure 
romance, belonged that fair and shimmering sheet 
of water which girdled the rounded bastions of 
that fantastically garmented wall ? Beyond, in the 
misty distance, gleamed a vision of towers and 
turrets, the fairy palace of this fairy world. The 



320 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

walls were still stout and strong, but they were 
covered with trailing vines and studded with foli- 
aged trees, — a breast of steel hung with garlands. 
The drawbridge even in the dead of night Avas down; 
a host of pixies might have crossed it ; and, as if in 
answer to some unseen Lohengrin's trumpet-call, a 
flock of kingly swans floated, serene and calm, over 
the silvered bosom of the waters. Their cries, an- 
swered by the " Quack, quack !"' of some ducks that 
formed their train, were the only sounds that took 
possession of the still, voiceless midnight. It was 
the myth of the Middle Ages come to life, apparelled 
in its matchless beauty and in the grandeur of its 
state. 

The sweep of a hand across a guitar, just a liquid 
note or two from a human throat, and it would 
have been Italy instead of staid respectable Eng- 
land, that knew no better than to go to bod and 
sleep away such a matchless night, — it would 
have been the house of the Capulets instead of the 
palace of a bishop. How Juliet's round arm would 
have gleamed over the curve of yonder bastion, and 
what a mirror for the midnight of her eyes this 
glassy sheet, as Romeo climbed to her lips along 
that pliant ladder of vines ! As it was, two North 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 321 

American savages entered and took possession of 
the scene. Was it a presage of the future, a pro- 
phetic image of the dominance of our new race, — 
tliis reflection of our motionless figures in the 
waters of the moat ? Were these the new heirs to 
the golden past, coming to take possession ? Arc 
we not, in truth, the rightful heirs to all this glory, 
this beauty of the past ? For whom else if not for 
us lives this golden legend, — the legend of history, 
of romance, of mediasvalism ? Sentiment and imagi- 
nation help us to cross the filmy bridge. Once in 
that delectable land a new and wondrous strength 
to do, to dare, to create new castles fairer than the 
world has ever seen, to sing songs such as human 
throats did never utter, should be our longed-for 
prayer of inspiration. 

Something of this rhapsody I ventured to breathe 
to Boston. He listened with exemplary patience 
to the end ; then for all answer he bade me look 
at the reflection of my face in the still waters. 
The features were so ridiculously puffed out, so 
exaggerated and distorted, that I turned away with 
a laugh. It was the malicious, contemptuous re- 
tort of the Past to the presumption of the Present. 

I accepted the lesson in all humility. 

21 



322 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

It was high noon before we were awake to see 
what the city was like by daylight. We expected 
that the illusion of the night before would be gone 
with the moonlight, but we were forced to admit 
that the town held its own uncommonly well. The 
little garden across the street was a brilliant glow 
of color under the broad sunlight. It was so gay 
and bright a spectacle, indeed, that we were quite 
willing to exchange it for the spectral camping- 
ground of the sentimental ghosts of the night be- 
fore. The cathedral also had lost its shroud of 
mystery ; it rose into the fair summer sky in 
stately majesty and splendor. 

" All the same, in spite of its beauty, let us go 
about the town first, before making a tour of the 
cathedral. It's too fine a morning to spend be- 
neath stone aisles," I said, as we strolled out. 

" As you like, my dear," Boston complied ; " only, 
to-morrow, you know, we must be off. The ca- 
thedral, Murray warns us, is a city by itself. We 
must choose between it and the town. We have 
lost half a day already." 

" Lost half a day ! " I burst forth. " Would you 
barter last night's midnight adventures for twenty 
ordinary days ? Why, if time were measured by 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 323 

sensations, as it should be, such a night would 
count as a whole decade." 

" By which method of calculation you would be 
about a thousand years old, with your talent for 
emotionalism," was Boston's chaffing retort. But 
in spite of the chaff, Boston, I could see, now that 
it was broad daylight, was more or less inclined to 
make light of the raptures of the previous evening. 
Man, even superior man, will never rise to the 
height of tolerating the indulgence of sentiment 
unless it leads to something, — to marriage, for in- 
stance, or to verse-making which can command a 
marketable price. 

Our stroll through the city proved it to be a 
compact little town. It could be held in the hol- 
low of one's hand, so to speak. The streets were 
lined by a fairish assortment of houses, old and 
new, those fronting on the market-place being the 
most pronouncedly picturesque. Here all the life 
and movement — a somewhat sluggish movement, 
at best — f ocussed itself. The noble gateways, the 
walls enclosing the cathedral close and the bishop's 
palace, — the stately towers of the one and the tur- 
rets of the other, — were a display of ecclesiastical 
splendor in marked contrast with the meagreness 



324 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

of the town. Wells is first and pre-eminently the 
bishop's seat and the site of his cathedral. The 
city is an accidental growth about their ramparts, 
like the growth of barnacles on a rock. 

One little street, however, charmed us into 
making a tour of discovery along its narrow side- 
walk. It had started bravely and fairly enough 
out from the market-place at right angles with our 
inn ; then we found it taking strange and capri- 
cious turns and windings. The houses, half of 
them, appeared too old and decrepit to follow its 
whimsical vagaries. Many of them had strayed 
into back alleys, and others had sunk dejectedly 
by the way. One house, however, had taken on 
new strength and courage. Its old face was un- 
blushingly made up with fresh paint ; and its worn 
sign-board was offering, in a mosaic of blandishing 
pictures, a vista of enjoyment to the visitor who 
should venture within. It was a bric-a-brac shop. 

We were ourselves suffering from a mild form of 
the mania. The fever had not been abated by the 
temptations which had assailed us at Salisbury, 
Winchester, and Bath. There was an air of con- 
scious wealth and dignified reserve in the scanty 
but rare bits of tapestry, and the one or two old 



WELLS, AX ENCHANTED CITY. 325 

carvcn chests which filled these narrow Avindows, 
which there was no resisting. We must behold 
what lay beyond if it brought financial ruin. 

An old man came forward to meet us as we 
entered. He wore a workingman's blouse with a 
long faded blue apron ; their dull tone made an 
admirable background for his powerful face. The 
hair and flowing beard were as grizzled as a polar 
bear's, and the face was seamed with deep wrin- 
kles, — the wrinkles of thought and care. But in 
his deep blue eye, as it met ours in a look of pene- 
trating interrogation, there was an extraordinary 
light and power. It was the artist's nervous, 
quickened eye, impressionable and perceptive. If 
his looks were remarkable, his manner was en- 
tirely commonplace. We wished to see some Chip- 
pendale chairs ? Yes, he had some, but he had 
forgotten just how much carving there was on 
tliem ; would we take the trouble to look at them ? 
Tiiey were in the other house. The house we were 
in, and of which we appeared to be making a more 
or less complete survey, would have furnished the 
delight and occupation of an entire day could we 
have consecrated it to such enjoyment. Trous- 
seau-chests with rare Gothic carvings. Delft plate, 



326 CATHEDRAL DAYS 

Sheritan sideboards, fourteenth-century mantel- 
pieces towering to the ceiling, and admirable tap- 
estries crowded each room through which we passed. 
The}' were as closely massed together as so much 
old rubbish. Then came an open courtyard, full of 
Hower-pots and green with vines. The old house 
had been an inn for years past. He had bought it, 
our guide went on to explain, to hold all his " stuff " 
together. It had been scattered before in differ- 
ent shops. But even the inn was n't big enough ; 
so he had bought the house adjoining. He pro- 
ceeded to lead us to an upper loft. It was bril- 
liantly lighted, and was filled with workmen. Old 
bits of tables, panels, and sideboards were stand- 
ing about. Some of the men were busy polishing, 
mending, and repairing these ; but most of them 
were bending over new wood, carving industriously. 
They were copying the old models before them. 
And we had traced to their source the secrets of 
Wardour Street ! We knew now how the new work 
was made to look so miraculously old. 

The master of tlie shop stopped to glance over the 
shoulder of a workman near the door. Out of the 
block in his hand emerged a half-draped figure. 
He was putting the finishing touches to the head. 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 327 

" You must cut the throat down ; it is too 
broad. Don't you see how slender the figure is ? 
It ain't a Amazon or a Bacchante ; it's a Psyche." 
The ohl man then took tlie knife, making one 
or two bokl incisions. It was the stroke of a 
master. The throat now w"as as slender as a 
lily-stalk. 

" The drapery over the knee ought to have some 
wrinkles in it ; one or two folds would take away 
that rigid look," whispered Boston to me. 

But the old man had licard him. He turned 
quickly with his wonderful eyes ablaze. " Ah ! you 
know something about carving, then. You are an 
artist, sir ? " he asked, with an entirely new man- 
ner, — a manner full of intensity and awakened 
interest. 

" No, we are only art-lovers," replied Boston, 
smiling. 

" Come, then, I '11 show you something Avorth 
looking at. The chairs are in there ; but there 's 
plenty of time for them," with a wave of dismissal 
as if Chippendales were of a very trifling order of 
interest. " There are some carvings downstairs 
you will scarcely see beat anywhere, sir. They 
took the prize at the Exhibition, sir." 



328 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

He led us hurriedly, almost tremblingly, down the 
rickety stairs. We repassed the dark alley-ways, 
the open sunlit court, the crowded stuffy rooms. 
Finally came a room, large, well lighted, with only 
two or three great pieces in them ; but each was 
a cJief-iVoeuvre. One, a massive sideboard, was 
crowded with a wealth of figures in full relief. 

" It 's a scene from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 
sir. It 's the starting out from the Inn. It 's a fine 
subject, ain't it, sir? — and new, too. It won the 
prize." 

There was no need of a prize to stamp the great 
work as a masterpiece. The figures were instinct 
with life. The entire scene was treated with won- 
derful naturalness and feeling ; it was as animated 
as a living pageant. 

Our praises brought a flush to the old man's 
cheek. 

"You're very kind, my lady. I see you love 
art. Did I carve it all quite by myself? Oh, dear, 
yes ! I have n't no workman could deal with such 
figures. You see, sir," — and in his earnestness 
(the shop-keeper had long since been lost in the 
artist) — in his earnestness tlue old man sat down 
beside us on a lono; carved settee and laid his 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 329 

■work-worn hand on Boston's arm, — " you see, 
wood-carving has made great progress in our day, 
but there 's only a few of us who really know the 
art. In the old days master and workman worked 
together, side by side. In our day it is boss and 
day-laborer. The boss must be overseer ; he 's too 
fine for dirty work. I 'm boss, but I 'm a work- 
man too, and so I get along. I 'm teaching my 
men myself, but it 's slow work. They ain't edu- 
cated, to begin with, and it 's slow work teaching 
them mythology and how to handle their tools too. 
But it'll come, — it'll come, sir." 

It was beautiful to see the fire that lit the old 
eyes and the flame that touched the wrinkled 
brow. The bent form, the eager trembling hands, 
the grand old head with its patriarchal beard and 
its ardent young eyes, — the immortally young 
eyes of the artist, — how admirably the figure fitted 
into the background of the rich strong carvings 
and the delicate grays and greens of the old tapes- 
tries ! It was the art-spirit of the Middle Ages 
come to life, but to a life fettered, as is its period, 
witli the shackles of a hoary antiquity. 

We saw no Chippendale chairs that day ; but 
we had stumbled on genius, — genius in carpet 



330 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

slippers and a blouse, but with a soul and a brow 
that had been kissed by the Muses. 

" I see now just what kind of men those old 
medigeval workers must have been. They were 
dreadfully shaky in their grammar ; but they 
knew the poets and the old gods and the Bible 
as we know Shakspeare. That old man has re- 
created an entire period for me. I know those old 
workers now." 

" Yes, he was a study ; and he was as shrewd 
as a Yankee. He had no Chippendales ; he used 
them for purely strategic purposes. He meant us 
to buy his mantelpiece." 

"Boston!" 

But I desisted ; I remembered in time that it 
was long past the luncheon hour, and that no man, 
under the dominion of hunger, can be expected to 
be just. 

We were to devote the rest of the day to the 
cathedral ; but just because it was an opposite 
neighbor, we indulged ourselves in making a little 
detour before entering it. Our feet involuntarily 
turned towards the moat and the bishop's palace. 
As it turned out, this proved the true and most 
perfect plan of approach. To cross the close and 






WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 331 

enter through the western front is the common- 
place tourist's method. To assault the bishop's 
palace, and gain one's first glimpse of the twilight 
interior, as the bishop himself does, through the 
garden and the cloisters, is to see the great cathe- 
dral in its full strength of beauty. 

As the drawbridge was still down, I crossed 
it. I saw that it was held in its defenceless posi- 
tion by ropes of vines and chains of moss. But 
the massive door beyond still looked formidable 
enough to resist a stout siege. I began to attack 
it vigorously. 

" What are you doing ? " cried Boston, who had 
stayed behind to look at the walls and the waters 
of the moat. ..--,- — riii?-- ' - 

" I want to see what a drawbridge is like, — I 
never crossed one before, — and also to se.e — " 

But we liad been discovered. One of the pan- 
els of the great door opened, and in its narrow 
rame the figure of a particularly attractive young 
Avoman defined itself. She smiled, as if she had 
expected us. The smile and her prettiness pro- 
duced their instantaneous effect upon Boston. The 
electricity of a pretty woman's glance is as yet the 
fastest known time made in the universe. 



332 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

" We were told this was the way to the bishop's 
palace," said Boston, with his best bow, and with 
the unblushing mendacity men are capable of 
summoning on such occasions. 

" You are quite right, sir. Visitors are admitted 
during the bishop's absence. Will you please" step 
this way ? " 

The way led us along a velvety lawn and past 
sunny and exquisitely trim gardens. We followed 
with alacrity ; or, to speak with entire truthfulness, 
only one of us strictly followed. My companion 
might be said to be enjoying a personally con- 
ducted tour of inspection. For so great became 
Boston's interest in our charming guide's intelli- 
gent explanations of the ruined hall, the moat, the 
terrace, and the wells, that insensibly, doubtless, he 
found himself walking by her side ; and the paths 
were narrow (they always are when a man finds 
he must choose between two women). But, reader, 
I found it in my heart to forgive him. A man who 
could have remained indifferent under the soft spell 
of those brown eyes and that blooming complexion 
would remain unmoved before the spectacle of his 
wife in her best gown. One ought to be willing to 
pay the price for discriminating sensibility. 




& 










ten :J?-.*».^-li«^,f|,|i|,{.^. 




Bishop's Palace, Wells Cathedral. 



Page 332. 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 333 

A bishop's palace I had always imagined would 
be different from the dwelling, however regal, of 
any other earthly potentate ; and for once the intui- 
tion was sustained by reality. We had seen no 
such collection of buildings as this in England. 
Perhaps no one, indeed, except a bishop would 
have dared to appropriate so much of earth, on 
his way to heaven, for purely domestic and festi- 
val purposes. The conception which possessed 
the ingenious and affluent imagination of Bishop 
Jocelin certainly proved him a colossus in magni- 
tude and magnificence of design. No otlier group 
of buildings so triumphantly attest the grandeur 
of mediaeval ecclesiasticism. The cathedral, the 
cliapter-house, the close, were in the original plan 
to be but a portion of the vast whole. The tem- 
poral side of a great bishop's state was to be rep- 
resented by the adjacent palace, engarlanded by 
flower-beds, terraces, and lawns. The plan, one 
Avould have thought, might have satisfied the most 
exacting and luxurious of thirteenth-century bish- 
ops. But when the palace was completed it was 
found to be on too modest a scale for the next 
spiritual incumbent ; it was too small for occasions 
of state. Bishop Burncll thereupon in 1280, with 



334 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

the ease with which great lords in those days grati- 
fied a want or indulged a caprice, built him a great 
hall. The praise that it was the longest episcopal 
hall in England must have sounded sweet in his 
ears. Even the greatest of us have our little 
vanities. 

The great banqueting-hall lies in ruins now. A 
portion of the walls is still standing ; bat the 
wide vacant windows, with their suggestion of 
festival state, are as so many yawning graves. 
Tliere is a touch of malice the old sculptors little 
dreamed they were carving, in the grotesque heads 
beneath the drip-stones. They suiTound the old 
ruin like a band of jeering demons, grinning as if 
with Satanic glee over its decay and abandonment. 

In blooming radiant contrast with this image of 
death, stands the palace. It is a gem-like little 
building. Its ancient portion is in a perfect state 
of preservation, and the modern additions have 
been made with admirable taste. Its gables, tur- 
rets, lancet and Tudor-mullioned windows, make an 
enclianting ensemble. It is as chastely draped as a 
goddess, with its flowing garment of vines and ivy. 
A glimpse was allowed us of the interior, — of the 
gallery with its groined roof and richly carved 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 335 

doors, and of the vaulted lower story, formerly the 
old cellar and entrance, now restored and used as 
a dining-room. 

We strolled later on towards the terrace. It 
overlooked the moat. The afternoon sun lay warm 
and dazzling on the sparkling waters, on the ivy 
along the walls, on the great and noble trees within 
the park. The beauty of it all was very different 
from that of the night before ; but in full sunshine 
it was quite as much a region of pure enchantment. 
Tlie views were as varied as they were surpassingly 
lovely. In the blue distance was Glastonbury Tor. 
Beyond the meadows, in the park, shone the jagged 
sides of Dulcot Hill. On the right, through the 
trees, the cathedral towers lifted themselves into 
the blue ether. On all sides the hills stretched 
away, surrounding the country and enclosing it, as 
the costly cathedral and the palace were enclosed 
by their own walls and ancient bastions ; it was a 
double fortification. 

On our way back through the gardens towards 
the cloisters, we noticed innumerable wells or 
springs, lying unenclosed and bubbling with life. 
These wells were at once the glory and the origin 
of the city itself, our guide explained. It was the 



336 CATJiEDRAL DAYS. 

discovery and the prevalence of these natural 
springs which decided the mediaeval bishop to iix 
upon Wells as the scat of the diocese. The moat 
is still fed from St. Andrews, — " the bottomless 
well," the original great well of King Ine. It still 
rises close to the palace, and falls in a cascade into 
the moat. All the centuries have not run it dry. 
During the Middle Ages this well made the palace 
almost impregnable. Its continued abundance has 
preserved to modern eyes, in perfect preservation, 
an ideal picture of those earlier methods of war- 
fare. In our own day the well has felt the modern 
movement. It has adapted its resources to modern 
utilitarianism ; it turns several mills, besides serv- 
ing to cleanse the city's streets. 

After the glare on the terrace, the damp sweet 
coolness along the garden paths that rimmed the 
bubbling springs was full of refreshment. The 
delicate sound of the bubbling waters and the dis- 
tant notes of the falling cascade made a delicious 
liquid harmony. No other music but that faint 
silvery tune would have fitted into the perfectly 
finished surroundings, or would have seemed in 
keeping with the domestic elegance of the gem-like 
palace, with the softened tragedy of the ruined 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 337 

hall, with the lovely scents and perfume of the 
white roses, the jessamine, the blooming vines, and 
above all, with the spiral loftiness of the cathedral 
towers. The melody of falling water is the most 
delicate of all sensuous sound, — it is music with- 
out the voluptuousness of rhythm. 

We gave ourselves up to its witchery and to the 
scene. We might stay as long as we liked, and 
walk about, our charming guide considerately said. 

" For the cathedral, sir, you see is quite handy," 
she added at leaving, as she lifted her dark eyes in 
farewell to Boston. 

It was a novel view to take of so impressive 
a building, this of a cathedral being " handy ; " 
but doubtless she only unconsciously reflected the 
bishop's own view of the edifice. In time very 
probably his cathedral does come to assume the 
aspect of a personal belonging. Such was the atti- 
tude of the older holders of the See in the great 
Middle-Age days ; and why should not such a feel- 
ing be hereditary, along with the office and the 
duties ? 

In whatever light the present bishop may view 

his noble temple, there can be no finer point from 

which to see it in its fullest beauty than from his 

22 



338 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

own gardens. Subsequent experimental observa- 
tions, talvcn at various other points, only served 
to confirm this first decision. First, through tlie 
trees you catch exquisite detached bits, — the 
traceries of the windows in the Lady Chapel and 
the southern transept framed into the freer breeze- 
blown branches ; then the entire apsidal portion, 
together with a wonderful view of the whole south- 
ern side, transept, central and western towers, 
chapter-house, and Lady Chapel, rise in splendor 
above the tree-tops. From no other point is the 
cathedral at once so impressive as a whole and so 
supremely and astonishingly picturesque. With 
such a review of its great and stupendously lovely 
beauties, you arc willhig to accept Wells as Messrs. 
Fergusson and Freeman would have you, — you are 
willing to declare it the most perfect and complete 
of all the English cathedrals. 

Then, if you happen to be less of a critic and 
master of technicalities than these learned gentle- 
men, if you will persist in using your own eyes, even 
if they be but those of an audacious amateur, as 
you proceed on a more detailed tour of investigation 
vou will awake to the surprise of discovering that 
you touched the climax of the cathedral's grandeur 




i^-iaj- -^ ,' 



■g^^^</:^g*^. 



Wells Cathedral, from Moat. 



Page 338. 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 339 

ill that first view. As you endeavor to spell out its 
various portions, you cannot avoid encountering two 
prodigious disappointments at the very outset. The 
frankness of full daylight will reveal the fact that 
the western front is a failure, — a positive, unde- 
niable, and obtrusive failure. This is the more 
vexatious since it possesses in a high degree a 
distinct note of impressiveness. This impressive- 
ness is due to the effect which so rich a multitude 
of statues must inevitably present. Such an array 
of serried saints and martyrs is as overwhelming 
as an army. But sculpture should be to architec- 
ture what acting is to the drama. It should be 
thought embodied in action. It must subordinate 
itself to the feeling it is meant to express. In this 
Wells facade the structural values are displaced. 
The architectural design is but a screen to serve as 
a background for the placing of the figures in 
position. The result is a want of depth and ear- 
nestness in the superficial architectural lines, which 
not even the dignity, the grace, and the irresistible 
simplicity of the sculptures themselves can supple- 
ment or efface. Added to this, is the note of 
discord contributed by the two western towers. 
Their unfinished tops, for all their refined and 



340 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

noble finish of detail, gives them a truncated ap- 
pearance. They are but the torsos of towers. 

The next shock of surprise comes from the first 
view of the nave, or, to speak more exactly, of the 
nave and the inverted arches at the intersection 
of the transepts. The nave itself is as completely 
lovely as a perfectly finished statue. It is in the 
very best style of the Early English period. The 
wonder is the greater that it should have been 
disfigured by these curiously incongruous inverted 
tower arches. As an ingenious and clever archi- 
tectural plan for strengthening the supports of the 
great central tower, one can conceive of the 
project's being admissible on paper ; but one is 
lost in horror at the thought of so monstrously 
ugly a conception being perpetuated in stone. 

This fact once accepted, and the additional one 
that all perspective is rendered impossible, both 
by reason of the organ and the arches, and the 
remainder of the cathedral will be found almost 
unsurpassable in point of beauty. Nowhere in the 
kiugdom, perhaps nowhere in the world, will be 
seen such a combination of all the highest elements 
of architectural beauty as one finds in this Wells 
choir, in its exquisite Lady Chapel, its retro-choir, 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 341 

and in its adjoining cliapter-hoiise. Where find 
such varied yet harmonious symmetry of design, 
such spirited y^ chastened originality, such ele- 
gance in proportion comljined witli such a wealth 
of elaboration in detail ? The choir, lofty, impres- 
sive, and gloriously lighted ; the Lady Chapel, of 
such extreme beauty as makes it the model pro- 
duction of the very best age ; the retro-choir, with 
its symmetrical arrangement of piers and clustered 
columns ; the chapter-house, reached by a flight of 
steps as beautiful as is the magnificent building to 
which it leads, — surely such a collection of build- 
ings under one roof is rare in any of the greatest 
building-ages. It is sufficiently rare in England to 
win one's consent to the verdict of those who know, 
to a full and complete assent with their praise of 
Wells. 

These gentlemen, besides their praise, will tell 
you that Wells was completed within a compara- 
tively short period, which partly accounts for its 
perfections. There was, of course, an early Saxoai 
cathedral which had fallen into decay. On its 
ruins rose, in the thirteenth century, the now exist- 
ing nave, transepts, the central tower as high as 
the roof, and the west front. The apsidal portions, 



342 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

the choir, Lady Chapel, and chapter-house, were the 
work of subsequent bishops during the latter part 
of the thirteenth and in the beginning of the four- 
teenth century. It was never a monastery nor a 
conventual church, but was always held as a cathe- 
dral proper. The cloisters, in proof of this, are 
only an ornamental walk about the cemetery, not 
designed to serve as a part of a monastic enclosure. 
Of all the bishops whose lives and careers are 
most closely identified with this bishopric of Bath 
and Wells, none so appeals to modern sympathies 
as does the blameless, courageous Bishop Ken. He 
owed his bishopric to the latter of these qualities, 
and also to a corresponding generosity rare in the 
make-up of kings. He it was who at Winchester 
had the courage to refuse to receive that fascinat- 
ing little wanton Nell Gwynne, who had accompa- 
nied her royal lover on a visit to that city. When 
the bishopric of Bath and Wells became vacant 
shortly after, Charles H. proved himself even greater 
than this stout Christian. He rose to the height of 
forgiving an injury. " Odd's fist ! " he cried to his 
courtiers, " who shall have Bath and Wells but the 
little fellow who would not give poor Nellie a lodg- 
ing ? " And this " most holy and primitive of 



WELLS, AN ENCHANTED CITY. 



343 



bishops " could thenceforth take his strolls on yon- 
der lovely terrace, and feast his poet's eyes on the 
loveliness of this goodly estate, until he was ban- 
ished to Longleat ; for he fell with his benefactor. 
But the author of those poetic hymns, " Morning, 
Evening, and Midnight," and the picture which 
history perpetuates of his singing to his lute at 
sunrise, as was his daily custom, can never be truly 
banished from the memory of men, not, at least, so 
long as gentleness, high courage, and lofty piety are 
loved and reverenced on earth. 



344 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER XV 

TO GLASTONBUEY. 

'' I ^HE next morning, as we w^ere strapping the 
-*- last bag a few moments before leaving, an 
extraordinary bustle and noise came up the street- 
and into the open windows. There was a great 
clattering of horses' hoofs, a clanking of heavy 
chains, and the rumble of stout wheels over the 
cobble-paved streets. 

"We looked out. It was to look down on a 
brilliant spectacle. An artillery company — guns, 
troopers, and officers whose sabres flashed in the 
morning sun — were clashing along the narrow 
thoroughfare. The town was in the streets ; at 
least that portion of it which was not craning its 
feminine neck out of the windows was gathered 
in awed, admiring groups on the sidewalk. The 
groups scattered now and then, only to re-form, 
as the four or five young officers in charge of the 
company plunged their horses into tlie midst of 



TO GLASTONBURY. 345 

the crowd to ring out the orders along the line. 
The troops, though evidently weary and whitened 
by the dust of prolonged travel, had that dashing, 
well-set-up air of the best military discipline char- 
acteristic of English soldiery. They were only 
travellers passing through a little provincial town 
en route for a northern city ; but they entered the 
narrow street as if they were an army come to take 
possession of an enemy's country. Their entry was 
made in such form that it seemed only part of a 
well-arranged series of attack. 

From the picturesque point of view, this peace- 
able invasion proved as good as a veritable assault. 
These scarlet coats lit up tlie dull gray streets 
into flashing brilliancy. The troopers' backs made 
a long line of flame across the low leaden-hued 
houses. The noise and the bustle in the streets 
made a bristling accompaniment to the clanking 
of the chains and the heavy thunder of the gun- 
carriages. The town, which had been asleep ac- 
cording to its custom of centuries, had suddenly 
waked up. Its slow pulse had been galvanized into 
a new life. A part, at least, of the active forces 
of the nineteenth century was sweeping along its 
sluggish stream, and the tidal wave was stirring 



346 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

the slow current. It was curious to note the con- 
trast between the gaping townspeople and these 
alert-looking soldiers. The people looked on in 
woodenish wonder, with becalmed eyes as they 
stood about in motionless attitudes. They might 
liave been a fourteenth-century instead of a nine- 
teenth-century provincial crowd, so alien and re- 
mote did they seeni to the stir and the modern 
vigor these fine-looking artillerymen brought with 
them. It is only, we said to each other, as we 
leaned on our elbows, looking down upon the 
stirring little scene, — it is only by some such 
sudden and vivid contrasts as these, — by the 
introduction in sharp juxtapositions of these two 
periods, the period of the present projected into 
the midst of this fossilized past, that one can be 
made to realize fully the antique spirit that still 
inhabits these mediseval towns. Their real exis- 
tence appears to have stopped three or four hun- 
dred years ago. They have lived on in calm, 
pulseless inactivity, virile only in the sense of 
being representative of some of the still surviv- 
ing features of feudalism. Their real life is iu- 
rooted in the past. They are as unmodern and as 
unprogressive as if they had been bottled in the 



TO GLASTONBURY. 347 

Middle Ages, and had been preserved as specimens 
of the mediteval in the Museum of the Picturesque. 
Yet who would have it otherwise ? These little 
towns are the nests which all the ages have been 
busy making for the immortal mating of those 
fugitive birds, Art and Poetry. Without them man 
would be as sterile, from the imaginative point of 
view, as a North American Indian. Their lifeless 
unmodern spirit helps to create and sustain the 
charming illusion of their remoteness, and the 
sense of their historic isolation. Their dulness 
seems only a part of their Quaker grayness. It is 
a calm which is in keeping with the twilight hush 
that broods under their cathedral aisles. Thus they 
charm into drowsy luxury of enjoyment the tour- 
ist's senses and faculties, as they continue to live 
on contentedly in the torpor of retrospection, by 
the fine subtle opiates of tlicir matchless beauty. 

These and other profound and philosophic reflec- 
tions were brought to an abrupt close, — for the 
troops had been ordered to halt. The first four or 
five gun-carriages and two of the younger officers 
were to be quartered on our inn. In the twink- 
ling of an eye the troopers were off their horses, 
the carriages had been quickly and dexterously 



348 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

wheeled into the courtyard, and a moment later 
the officers' swords were heard clanking along the 
wooden stairway. 

The excitement which had pervaded the town 
now took possession of our little inn. It was 
thrown into convulsive throes of energy. The 
energy, however, appeared, by auricular evidence, 
to be concentrated in the male element of the es- 
tablishment. The hostlers and waiters appeared 
to be in lively response to the sudden call of the 
emergency. But the women had evidently quite 
lost their heads. The maids stood about in con- 
scious pairs, smiling vacuously at the troopers, 
twiddling their apron-strings. It was painful to 
learn, on Boston's going down to order Ballad to 
be l)rought round, that the appearance of the two 
young officers had even had the power to put the 
handsome landlady in a flutter. The rule that 
temporary paralysis invariably sets in among wo- 
men at the sight of a few brass buttons and a 
uniform, was apparently to find no exception in 
this instance. 

We were soon in need of other consolation than 
a talent for making light of a disagreeable situa- 
tion. We waited a lono: half-hour, and still no 



TO GLASTONBURY. 349 

Ballad. As the sun was meanwhile mounting 
high, and noon was approaching, there was a 
better reason than mere irritation for our impa- 
tience. 

" Confound tlie women ! I wish they could do 
anything, even to answering a bell-rope, as well 
as a man," cried Boston, in his disgust and 
vexation. 

" As the men of the establishment appear to 
have kept their heads, I '11 go and see if I can't 
impress a hostler," I said. " There 's nothing like 
carrying a war into an enemy's camp." And I 
determinedly opened the door. 

It was to stumble on a bit of genteel comedy. 
In the door directly opposite was framed the fig- 
ure of one of the young officers. He was in jaunty 
deshabille, and was holding in charmed dialogue 
one of the pretty chambermaids. Some point in 
his gay discourse appeared to render a pinching 
of tlie latter's rosy cheek necessarily explanatory. 
The girl was responding by a dazed little courtesy. 
My appearance was the signal for a hasty dropping 
of the curtain. The door was shut to with a bang ; 
and the girl, in a cloud of blushes, disappeared 
round an angle of the hall- way. 



350 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

It was our fate to witness still another encounter 
of this young gallant, which, however, did not have 
quite so brilliant a finish. Ballad had been at last 
brought to the door. There was the usual delay 
in the courtyard before the trap was entirely 
packed and loaded. Then, when the last hostler 
had strapped the last strap and had pocketed the 
last shilling, we issued forth to drive slowly and 
lingeringly out of the little town. We had turned, 
as was our wont, to take a farewell glimpse of the 
cathedral, at the first corner which was to hide 
the great structure behind a wall of house-fronts. 
As our eyes gradually descended from the glitter- 
ing tower-tops, swimming in noon-light, into the 
glare of the streets, with a black shadow cut here 
and there by an eave or a window-ledge, three 
figures stood out in brilliant contrast against the 
whitened house-fac^ades. Two of the figures were 
those of the two young officers. They Avere re- 
splendent in scarlet coats and gold lace. The 
third was that of a young lady, tall and gracefully 
slender. She was walking along close beneath the 
wide window-ledges, to catch what shade their 
broad shelter might afford. She was carrying, as 
is the custom of .English ladies in rural cities, a 



TO GLASTONBURY. 351 

small wicker basket filled with odds and ends of 
shopping. A carriage followed slowly behind. As 
the three figures advanced, there was a little well- 
bred start of surprise on the part of the young offi- 
cers ; their hats were raised, and mutual greetings 
were interchanged ; but beneath the young lady's 
richly feathered Gainsborough, a frigid distant 
smile met the eyes bent upon her. Two languid 
finger-tips were extended, a monosyllable or two 
were uttered, and she passed on. 

" I 'm glad they were snubbed, — and she was 
pretty too," I said to Boston, as we turned a 
corner, 

"Why were you glad? They were perfectly civil, 
apparentl}', and they were rather fine-looking too, in 
their way," answered Boston, in the tone men use 
when they feel it necessary to defend one another. 

" Oh, they were good-looking enough, but they 
had such a London swagger, and such a London- 
er's talent for losing no time in sowing a wild oat 
or two. The modern man — " 

" The modern man sows fewer than his grand- 
fathers did." 

" That 's only a relative progress. Society will 
never be on a truly right basis until — " 



352 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

" My dear, I '11 grant anything. It 's getting too 
hot for temperate arguriient or even for sane talk 
of any sort. Would you mind holding your para- 
sol out of my eyes, please ? " 

The heat was, in truth, tropical. It was as hot 
as Naples or New York. Besides the heat to 
endure, there was a sirocco of dust. Why, of all 
days, had we chosen this one for a noon drive ? 
Why had we not kept to our lately discovered plan 
of starting at sundown and arriving in the small 
hours, in the cool of the night, at our destination ? 
We kept repeating this question — asked unwisely 
all too late, else there would be no errors in life to 
regret — most of the way along our torrid high-road 
to Glastonbury. The road, the views, the land- 
scape, were spoiled for us. The sun beat his fierce 
light on a road as destitute of shade as a plain. 
The dust was as a wall between us and the out- 
lying country. This drive from Wells to Glaston- 
bury may be the most beautiful in England ; for 
us it proved only an eight-mile journey of torture. 
The sole point of interest, as Ave neared the low- 
lying hills about Glastonbury was centred for us 
in the All-Weary Hill, where in the dim eaily 
centuries Joseph of Arimathea was supposed to 



TO GLASTONBURY. 353 

have finally rested after his long brave pilgrimage. 
With that ardent disciple we felt now a new bond 
of sympathy. Our belief in the reality of his pres- 
ence here was strengthened by the need of the 
proof that so reliable a fellow-traveller had sur- 
vived the journey. After all, much perhaps of our 
fine incredulity regarding certain mythical state- 
ments might be changed into quickened belief were 
more of us, in these more comfortable days, sub- 
jected to the commoner hardships of life. We are 
out of toucli with the old martyr's hardships and 
the toil of the early disciple's daily life ; we no 
longer live in conditions which make the Apos- 
tle's simple faith or the propagandist's fervent un- 
dismayed audacity realizable. From the purely 
physical standpoint we are removed from them by 
far more than mere centuries of time. We are 
too well fed, too warm, too rested to believe very 
acutely in willing ascetics, in voluntary nakedness, 
or in gladly self-enforced labor and toil. Physi- 
cally, our conditions are as changed as morally we 
stand far removed from the early primitive condi- 
tions under which great spiritual deeds were possi- 
ble and almost easy. If Boston and I, for instance, 

had arrived here in Glastonbury by train, unwearied, 

23 



354 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

unlieated, unvexed by dust and the discomfort 
of enduring a broiling sun for nearly two hours, 
our interest in Joseph of Arimathea and the story 
of his resting on yonder hill would have fallen, 
without doubt, on dull, incredulous ears ; but a 
little dust, heat, and fatigue made him and his 
journey seem entirely real. As a traveller, his 
experiences over-topped ours, it is true ; but had 
he suddenly appeared among us, Ave should have 
sat down at the common board, — there must have 
been tavern-boards even in his time, — we should 
have interchanged experiences and clasped the 
hand of fellowship and rejoicing. 

Had neither history nor guide-books been writ ten 
to establish the authentic antiquity of Glastonbury, 
its age would have written itself. The town, as 
we drove into it, had the immistakable mouldi- 
ness which centuries of life and bygone careci's 
leave as a part of historic deposit. The church 
towers looked more like fortresses than belfries ; 
and the narrow streets had the richness of gray 
coloring which old stones yield. The bits of moss, 
of lichens, the tufts of foliage here and there in the 
chinks of the old houses and in the cracks of the 
old walls, were like the gray, stumpy bits of beard 



TO GLASTONBURY. 355 

old men grow, too thoroughly inrooted in unyield- 
ing soil to obey the razor or the scythe. 

Chiefest and most beautiful of the old houses in 
this still ancient Glastonbury is the George Inn. 
The architectural authoi'ities who tell you so much 
of its beauty do not tell you enough of its charm. 
The beauty lies in the unity and grace of its 
fa(,-ade ; but the charm is to be found in its hav- 
ing preserved so astonishingly the old methods of 
living. The walls are thicker, for instance, than 
many of the rooms are wide. The light winch 
came through the picturesque mullioned windows 
was scanty and treacherous. The little sitting- 
room, which was coffee-room, inn-parlor, and com- 
mercial room in one, was as darkly lighted as a 
dungeon, and not much more commodious. It would 
have been impossible, in a word, on a hot noonday 
to have been more antiquely uncomfortable. Our 
ancestors presumably considered the compensations 
of safety as a happy exchange for larger comfort 
or freedom. But the nineteenth century, which 
lias no use for walled towns or narrow streets or 
thick walls, prefers, on the whole, rather to play at 
medievalism than to live it. This was our own 
first experience of a genuine fifteenth-century 



356 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

luncheon in a fifteenth-century inn. The comely 
serving-maid who brought in yesterday's shoulder 
of lamb, a huge cheese, and tankards of beer of the 
size aud quantity accredited in fiction to the heroes 
of that strong age, made the fitting human com- 
pletion to the rest of the picture, — to the little 
dark room, with its low ceilings, its forti'ess-like 
walls, and its rough deal furniture. There was 
notliing to mar the unity of the whole as a mas- 
terly bit of mediaeval reproduction. As a final 
touch, there were the grunting of pigs and the 
cackling of hens in the courtyard, added to which 
was the pervasive odor of manure and hay from 
the stables, which, for convenience doubtless, had 
been built directly beneath the inn's sitting-i'oom 
windows. 

The innkeeper appeared to be enough of a con- 
noisseur in architecture to prefer a prolonged con- 
templation of the unequalled beauties of the exterior 
of this famous little inn, to subjecting himself to 
any reminders of its internal deficiencies. On our 
arrival we had found him planted, with legs wide 
apart, at a comfortable angle for a protracted survey, 
beneath one of the lower windows. He was still 
there when, after luncheon, we had come to the 




Arch, Glastonbury. 



P<^ge 357- 



rO CLASTONBUllY. 357 

point of asking our way to the abbey. He was 
again at bis post when we returned some two hours 
later. 

Our way, he told us, was not far. We were to 
cross the street, turn under yonder old archway, 
take a little alley to our right, follow between the 
two high walls till we reached a small green door 
which would open at the touch of a bell. All this 
sounded very mysterious and inviting ; for ruins 
in these old countries have come to be as guarded 
and as ingeniously tucked away as bits of hidden 
treasure. To the stranger, part of their charms 
perhaps lies in these quaint and curiously unex- 
pected methods of approach. The homeliness of 
this path along which we were proceeding, for in- 
stance, made our first sight of the great abbey's 
ruins dt.ubly impressive. We passed through a 
courtyard filled with farm-wagons, rakes, and 
scythes. The long wall closed about rows of 
straggling, weary-looking old houses ; and the lit- 
tle green door seemed not unlike those mysteri- 
ously commonplace doors in fairy-land which, once 
opened, usher in paradise itself. 

This particular paradise was a paradise of ruins. 
Glastonbury Abbey lies mostly on the ground. 



358 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Such portions of it as are still standing are the 
debris of a colossus. No one thing so strikes 
upon the eje at a first glance as does the im- 
mensity of it all, — the tremendous sweep of lawn, 
once entirely covered with the old conventual build- 
ings ; the grandeur of the still remaining walls, 
whose fitting roof seems heaven's vast vault ; and 
the still standing glory of the great trees, whose 
tops overhang the nave aisles. It would be impos- 
sible, I think, for a magnificent building in ruins 
and Nature, grandly, nobly alive, to form a more 
deeply and profoundly impressive union than do 
tiiese Glastonbury enclosures. Nature has supple- 
mented what time and the desecration of man have 
attempted to destroy. These great lawns and giant 
trees have preserved at least something of that gran- 
dem* which must have been, even during its greatest 
day of glory, the noblest feature of this abbey. 

That the abbey and its dependencies once cov- 
ered sixty acres of ground seems entirely realizable, 
with this splendid sweep of velvet before one. The 
branches of the trees, as they play beneath the 
touch of the light winds, are Nature's gracious sub- 
stitute for the lofty vaulting which once covered 
the long stretch from yonder distant nave to this 



TO GLASTONBURY. 359 

crumbling, aerially roofed St. Josepli's Chapel. 
The latter, even in its decay, is still one of the 
most perfect examples of the transitional period. 
The Norman windows, with their rich embroidery 
of tooth-work and of embattled mouldings ; the 
slender nave aisles, with their semicircular arches 
covered with roses, crescents, and stars in the 
spandrels ; the noble doors, massive in their struc- 
tural solidity, — make such a fnsion of the best later 
Norman features and the Early English nascent 
forms as is unmatched for harmonious unity. As 
one deciphers the half-obliterated features of this 
once supremely lovely little building, one is lost in 
a rapture of wonderment as to what its perfect and 
completed whole must have been. What a miracle 
of luxuriance in ornament, what a harmony of 
flowing lines, and what an infinity of device in it 
all ! Such portions of the great abbey as are still 
standing — the tall side walls, the few bits of sculp- 
ture still traceable in St. Mary's Chapel, the pier- 
arches, and the short, broken bits of vaulting here 
and there — everywhere repeat these notes of afflu- 
ent richness in design, and the superabundance of 
ornamental wealth, which St. Joseph's Chapel first 
reveals. The abbey was built, in a word, before 



360 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

the sculptor's chisel or the architect's inventiveness 
had begun to tire. Both here rioted in the sense 
of an almost reckless fertility of invention. The 
Norman died here in a blaze of glory. The truer, 
more native Early English was cradled into birth 
by a parent whose own life was ending in the 
midst of a transfigured glory. 

That the abbey was as rich in worldly posses- 
sions as it was glorious in architectural splendor, 
is a part of that history which made these great 
media) val monasteries such a wondrous paradox. 
Within these sixty acres reigned for centuries a 
stujjendous conventual hierarchy. These Benedic- 
tine monks had foresworn the world, only to re- 
possess its luxuries under more assured conditions. 
When Henry YIII. came, they had become so 
drugged with the rich poisoned svines of enjoyment, 
that not only the monks but the abbot himself 
turned thief and common pilferer. The abbey 
treasures were deliberately stolen, hidden away, or 
sold by the pious ascetics who had voluntarily taken 
the vows of poverty and sanctity. Torre Hill, on 
which now bristles a sturdy tower, commemorates 
Henry's view of the situation. The abbot who 
refused to yield up his abbey into his king's hands. 



TO GLASTONBURY. 361 

and then began a deliberate system of thieving to 
insure at least the possession of the abbey's treas- 
ures, paid for his short-sighted political sagacity 
and impiety with his life. With Whiting's execu- 
tion, the monastery was con^scated to the use of 
the more powerful king. It was abandoned, and 
finally crumbled into ruin ; but in its decay its 
utility may be said, perhaps, to have begun. The 
magnificent pile, as liave so many of the great 
buildings at Rome, served as a quarry for desecrat- 
ing builders. Half of Glastonbury town, as well 
as the long causeway across the Sedgemoor, has 
been constructed out of its fallen mass of ruins. 

There are two incidents in the history of Glas- 
tonbury which stand out in luminous relief against 
the background of its later monkish luxury and its 
earlier days of ascetic piety. The one is the story 
of the life and career of Abbot Dunstan. The 
record of his brilliant achievements reads all the 
better in the pages of serious history, as a welcome 
relief to the interminable chronicle of the wars 
with the Danes, the chief political and military 
events of his day. But there is a tender episode in 
his career which has always seemed to me to throw 
a flood of light on the customs and manners of a 



362 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

period we are wont to liken to Cimmerian dark- 
ness. In his earlier days Dunstan, like Abelard, 
as well versed as he in the learning, philosophy, 
and poetry of his day, was followed by a train of 
pupils. The versatility of his gifts is proved by the 
statement that a lady summons him to her house 
to design a robe slie is embroidering. He and her 
maidens bend together over their task ; and a harp, 
which he has strung on the wall, " sounds without 
mortal touch in dulcet tones." The monk had 
anticipated the modern testhete, you see, by just 
a thousand years ; but he was a better lover than 
the emasculated specimens which hyperculture 
breeds in our day. As monk at Glastonbury, 
Dunstan became the spiritual guide of a woman of 
high rank, whose virtues were as great as her 
beauty was rare. In the simple, fervid English of 
those days the chronicler says, " and he ever clave 
to her, and loved her in wondrous fashion." It 
was only at her death that he became abbot. 

Tlie other incident in tlie history of Glastonbury 
is the one, above all others, 'which aureoles it with 
the halo of poetic associations. 

The picture glows with the color of tradition. 
Two monks go forth into the morning to dig, in 



TO GLASTONBURY. 363 

tlie now untraceable cemetery, the grave of one of 
the brothers. As the earth yields to their labor, 
their tools strike hard against a stone. Beneath 
the stone rests a stout oaken coffin. They wrench 
the coffin open, and behold, witliin lies the figure of 
a kingly, stalwart man, on whose breast rests the 
head of a yellow-haired woman. The figures are 
none other than those of the stainless king and his 
erring and beautiful Guinevere. A leaden cross 
beneath the stone bears the inscription, " Hie jacet 
sepultus inclytus Rex Arthurus in insula Aval- 
Ionia." The story appears almost too obviously 
in consonance with the demands of historic justice 
to be taken for historic truth. Launcelot and the 
poets having done their uttermost to perpetuate 
Guinevere's periidy during her husband's lifetime, 
the historians have felt it, perhaps, to be but the 
barest justice to place them, indisputably, side by 
side in death. 

Legend and poetry seem far more fitting notes 
to issue forth from these " ruined choirs " than the 
reminders of the monks' fat living and their deep 
wassailing, which the massive square kitchen re- 
calls. The building stands almost intact, beyond 
the main ruins. The cowled brethren of the 



364 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, with such a 
capacious little fortress as their cuisi7ie, were as- 
suredly not starved. What a refinement of ass- 
thetic and religious epicureanism is suggested by 
such a chapel as St. Joseph's, in which to worship 
of a morning, and the sitting down after Mass to 
such a dinner as these huge spits and yawning 
ovens must have furnished ! One must be brouglit 
face to face with such a spectacle as Glastonbury 
presents, even in its ruins, to have some of the 
great pictures of the past thrilled with a new life 
and meaning. To read of such a monastery as 
this and the history of its career, from its estab- 
lishment sixty years after Christ to the dramatic 
finale on Torre Hill, can scarcely fail to interest 
the least imaginative reader ; but to stand here 
within sight of these giant walls, before these 
vast perspectives and their crumbling glories, is to 
have the shadowy aisles filled with the pomp and 
splendor of those bygone ceremonials, with the 
long procession of the Benedictine Brothers, with 
the kingly abbot, who, as he swept in state from 
his monastery along the cloistered walk, could rest 
his eye on a fair and smiling country, which, far as 
he could see, was all his own. As the choir-boys' 








^'t. '-'Wr? '/LL,-_.^ 'I 







.^ 



TO GLASTONBURY. 365 

chorals smote liis ear, heaven and eartli must in- 
deed have seemed to clap their hands for joy over 
so royal a possession. Perhaps, if the sons of 
heaven had not attempted to appropriate so much 
of earth, the swift-footed Nemesis of the Reforma- 
tion might have stayed its speed. It is a pity 
that these brethren could not have gone out in a 
greater blaze of spiritual glory. One would like 
to cover the abbey ruins with at least a sentimental 
tissue of regret born of wholesome admiration ; 
but the monks were such a poor hybrid of man 
and beast that Henry VIIT. for once at least poses 
as a rio-hteous executioner. 



3G6 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

TO EXETER. 

"^ I "HE drive to Bridgewater was a dull one, in 
spite of our having secured the twilight 
as a torch and the stars as fellow-travellers. 
Bridgewater was as dull as its approaches, the 
town being in the heart of a long stretch of flat 
lands, the sole uninteresting feature we had seen 
on the face of this lovely Somersetshire. Bridge- 
water, however, might have been even less attrac- 
tive than we found it, and it would still have 
been fraught to us with a serious import, for our 
reaching it at all Avas to mark an epoch in our 
journey. 

It had been decided at Salisbury, between two 
tall and viciously feeble candles that refused to 
shed any save the most meagre light on the 
county-maps, the guide-books, and the discussion, 
that we should go from Bridgewater to Exeter by 
train. This decision had not been arrived at, as 



TO EXETER. 367 

may well bo imagined, without much and serious 
thought. The inception of the plan had grown out 
of a mistaken policy of which we had never been 
wholly able to rid ourselves, — the folly of asking 
advice. The hills about Bath and the betrayal of 
Ballad's weakness in the matter of ankles had 
engendered the vague fear in our minds that the 
Devonshire hills might prove to be even more 
prolific in disaster than Stonehenge and Coombe 
Down. On one or two incautious occasions we 
mentioned our fears to a friendly Somersetshire 
hostler ; thereupon the entire county seemed to 
arise as one man to save us from what, it appears, 
would be certain peril. 

" He 's too light, sir ; he ain't up to such rough 
work." 

" The hills, sir, why, the hills is like the sides of 
a house ; an' he 's for easy-goin' travel, he is." 

" You 'd be left high and dry, tak' my word for 
it, sir ; he 'd drop on your hands after the first 
mile of stiff climbing." 

When hostlers agree, how is the untutored, un- 
horsey mind to stand firm ? We Aveakly yielded ; 
and on one particularly bright, late August morn- 
ing we all three took the morning express to 



368 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

Exeter. The gain to Ballad of such an arrange- 
ment was obvious. Securely fastened in the freight- 
car, he was, perhaps, for the first time since the 
beginning of his travels, able to enjoy the scenery 
from an impersonal critical stand-})oint. Our own 
loss of two days' driving through the Devonshire 
lanes and hills was equally certain. 

Through the narrow slits of the railway-carriage 
"windows it was possible, however, to snatch swift 
if unsatisfactory glimpses of the country. For at 
least a third of our journey we were to be in 
Somersetshire ; the landscape, therefore, still wore 
the smile of a friend. The morning, had it been 
made to order, could hardly have been better 
chosen for this our last view of this noble county. 
The sky had just the right quality of tone, and the 
atmosphere the perfect note of clearness, to bring 
into harmony the distant hill-lines and the softness 
of the nearer meadows. The country seemed to 
roll away as if in happy, conscious abandonment 
towards the brilliant edges of the morning horizon, 
carrying with it the wondrously tender green and 
gold and brown undulations. In the valleys the 
shadows were still nestling, as if loath to leave their 
midnight camping-grounds ; on the hills was still 



TO EXETER. 369 

lingering the faint blue mist, the breath of the not 
too broadly awakened day. 

In spite, however, of such a banquet of beauty 
for a morning repast, the haunting sense of regret 
was not wholly stilled. A carriage rolling leisurely 
along a well-shaded lane, raising a light cloud of 
white dust, which the whiter smoke of the train 
voraciously devoured, seemed to emphasize with 
peculiar impressiveness the poignancy of our re- 
morse. Why had we been wise ? What, after all, 
were perpendicular hills compared to the joy and 
delight of our lost open-air days, with their leisurely 
calm, with Nature at arm's length, and Adventure 
perhaps, plumed hat and sword in hand, to meet us 
en route ? The hills, now that we faced them, 
seemed commonplace enough, like most of the 
troubles in life which experience levels to the 
reach of our capacity. Already, Avhat with our 
regret and remorse, the whole of our enchanting 
tour seemed to belong to a part of our past, — a 
glorious bit of experience relegated to the perspec- 
tive of retrospect instead of being the living, acting 
present. 

One event in our journey dispelled for a time 
these dismal thoughts. This event was our en- 

24 



370 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

trance into Devon. The country gave us no en- 
lightening hint of the precise moment when we 
should cross the boundary-line between the two 
counties. But a short distance before reaching 
Taunton our sole fellow-traveller, a young Britisher 
of florid aspect, who had been diligently engaged 
in reading a strangely familiar-looking iittle brown 
book, " The Tourist's Guide to Devon," remarked, 
" We shall be in Devon in a few moments," imme- 
diately resuming the perusal of the little brown 
book. He belonged to the class of tourists who 
prefer to see scenery and a new country properly 
bound between the pages of a book, Avith well- 
arranged notes and statistical information ; they 
are then quite sure of doing the thing thoroughly. 

It was at Wellington, several miles farther on, 
that the first proofs of a distinctly different and 
alien beauty in the scenery proclaimed that Devon 
was equal to maintaining its reputation for certain 
high qualities. The land all at once took on 
strange depressions and abrupt alternations. Sud- 
denly there burst on our sight a magnificent 
stretch of country. The spurs of the Black Hills 
projected into the landscape with the ruggedness 
of robust mountains. Farther on, the rude little 



TO EXETER. 371 

villages, the primitive-looking huts, and the com- 
paratively sparse population proved that the wilder 
characteristics for which Devon is so much praised 
are no fable. The romantic character of the land 
deepened in charm as we sped along ; the streams 
were fuller and the dells more sylvan, while there 
was a bolder vigor of outline about the uplands 
and the remoter hills which made the feet long to 
press them. 

No one — at least no American, I think — enters 
Devon without experiencing a peculiar thrill of 
interest. It may be partly because the imagina- 
tion has been stirred immemorially by historians 
and novelists, by the traditions and descriptions of 
the romantic character of its scenery, or it may 
be due to its noble historic periods and its prolific 
breeding of heroes and heroic deeds ; but certain 
it is that no other English county appeals to 
American sympathies with just the same quality 
and magnetic attraction as do the hills and the 
streams of Devonshire. Although it is English 
to its heart-core, in crossing its boundaries one 
has the sense of entering a different, though not 
a foreign, country. It seems to be apart from 
the rest of England. One has a vague sense that 



372 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

its Exipoor hills and its Dartmoor forests still 
abound in picturesque episodes, as they do in tlieir 
legends of pixies and fairies. Devon is the fairy- 
land of the imagination ; it continues, by the sheer 
force of the magic that lies in its history and 
sceneiy, to be a part of the romance of our own 
lives. One of us, I remember, in his enthusiasm, 
went to the length of finding plausible reasons 
for these enchanting Devon characteristics, — for 
its individuality, its still-continued halo of romance, 
and its appeal to our transatlantic sympathies. 
Tiie solution of them all was to be found in the 
fact that instead of Devon's being un-English, it 
was superlatively English : it was the ideal, the 
typical, the only truly national England ; its land- 
scape corresponded, as did no other in this green 
isle, to the traits of the national character, — for the 
Englishman is not as yet so highly and completely 
finished as are his sylvan Wilts or his rolling 
lawns of Sussex ; whereas in this ruder landscape 
the contrasts abound which are prefigured in his 
own nature. And a hand was used with effect- 
ive, sweeping gesture, I also remember, to include 
the smoothness of a near sunny patch of corn, the 
ruggedness of the distant hill-lines, the broad 



TO EXETER. o(o 

spaces of solitude, and the mingled brilliancy and 
delicacy in the atmosphere, in ti-ium})hant proof of 
this theory. 

1 also (5[uite distinctly remember, although my 
note-book very considerately dpcs not record the 
snub, that whoever was listener somewhat unfeel- 
ingly remarked, that the idea was suggestive and 
possibly worthy of consideration; but in view of the 
fact that we were rapidly nearing Exeter and the 
time had come to collect the hand-luggage, it would 
be wiser on the whole to dismiss it and to keep, 
instead, a sharp lookout for a porter. 

The Rougeniont Hotel was too near tlie railway 
station for the usual cursory glimpses one gains 
from a cab or an omnibus window, — glimpses' 
which, like all first impressions, are valuable as a 
background, if only for purposes of future com- 
parison or alteration. "We had been assured, with 
much earnestness of asseveration, by each one of 
our guide-l)ooks in turn, tliat Exeter had preserved, 
in an extraordi;iary degree, its aspect of antiquity ; 
that we should find it, indeed, an epitome of 
Devon's former greatness and glory. 

In our five nnnutes' walk from the station 
to a superlatively modern hotel, the impression 



374 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

produced by this first sliock of contact was that it 
might have been built yesterday. The force of 
this impression was certainly not diminished by 
the figure of tlie hotel porter in a London livery, 
who stood ready to grasp our hand-luggage, nor by 
the admirably appointed elevator, furnished with 
enough mirrors to satisfy even a Frenchman's 
vanity, nor by the large, airy, and elaborately up- 
holstered apartment into which we were ushered. 
In themselves there is nothing, to even a senti- 
mental pair of tourists, positively offensive in easy- 
chairs or in a spring-mattress. Boston, a little 
later, at luncheon formulated both our disappoint- 
ment and our subsequent appeasement, as he took 
his experimental sip of the ox-tail soup. 

" After all, a good soup does tempt one to put 
up with civilization." 

" Yes," I replied ; " at its best and at close 
quarters civilization is, perhaps, an improvement 
on hoary antiquity." 

We were soon to find, however, that Exeter was 
as rich in hoary antiquity as in the latest experi- 
ments in civilization for subduing man by making 
him comfortable. 

An hour after luncheon, as we turned away from 



TO EXETER. 375 

the glaring brick facade of the Rougemont towards 
the city's thoroughfares, we had left in the twink- 
ling of an eye three hundred years — nay, five — 
behind us, and were in the heart of the grandly 
beautiful ancient city. The antique picturesque- 
ness of Exeter, it was obvious at the very outset of 
our tour of observation, was too abundantly rich 
in a sense of its own completeness to be either coy 
or secretive. Instead of one's havmg to seek for 
the jewels of the lovely old city among its dung- 
hills, its glories arc set in lustrous conspicuousness 
in the very centre of its crown. High Street, the 
city's main thoroughfare, is as crowded with its 
multitudinous collection of old houses, quaint 
churches, enticing low shops, and with the em- 
broideries of its carvings, as an over-filled museum. 
The houses, in the variety and diversity of their 
architectural plan and arrangement and in the 
lovely blending of their sad soft colors, can best, 
perhaps, be likened to a collection of finely pre- 
served old portraits, on whose garb and facial ex- 
pression the seal of the long-ago centuries has 
set its mark of remoteness. 

It is unquestionably, I should say, the most pictur- 
esque thoroughfare in England. This superlative 



376 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

degree of pre-eminence it maintains, perhaps, be- 
cause of its poiisessing two entirely opposite traits, 
— it strikes you as being at once the oldest 
and also the youngest of streets. It has possessed 
the talent of preserving, amid all its ancient fea- 
tures, the art of looking perennially youthful. In 
our own day it is the busy, vigorous, commercial 
air of activity and prosperity, — the young blood 
coursing throiigh its old veins, — which makes its 
life seem sympathetically modern. This charac- 
teristic strikes, I fancy, the key-note of Exeter's 
long-preserved vigor of life ; she has always been 
in direct and active response to the stirring ac- 
tivities of her day. Like Rome itself, her cities 
have been built and destroyed, her people have 
been scattered and her tribes have perished, and 
yet she has lived on, renewing, phoenix-like, her 
youth and her vigor. The city, as a whole, pos- 
sesses this dual aspect : it sits on its hills proudly, 
nobly, with an air of unshaken permanence and 
immovable stability, with something of the pride 
and the conscious dignity of the unconquered and 
unconquerable, — an attitude and bearing we are 
apt to believe belonged to the proud and passionate 
feudal towns, which thev maintained as their hcritao-e 




Exeter Guildhall. 



Page 377. 



TO EXETER. 377 

of heroism ; yet the city's heart, the centre of its 
busy frame, pulsates with modern life, and is visi- 
bly thrilled with the modern movement. It is this 
union of antiquity and modernness which invests 
Exeter with the qualities and character usually 
found only in capitals. More than any other Eng- 
lish city did Exeter impress us as an independent, 
autocratic city, one more used to wearing a crown 
tlian to bowing before another, — a kingly city, in 
other words, accustomed to meeting sovereigns on 
an equal footing. 

The culminating point of the picturesqueness 
of High Street is the beautiful Guildhall, with its 
spacious Elizabethan colonnade, which projects, 
with its four grand columns, into the crowded 
street. The eye has endless sport and delight in 
deciphering the worn figures, in plunging into the 
fine shadows made by the overhanging galleries, 
and in resting on the noble mass as it proudly 
steps forth among the meagre nineteenth-century 
buildings, with their superficial smirk and preten- 
tiousness. Among the many other rich and well- 
preserved treasures with which Exeter abounds, is 
an ideally jjerfect Elizabethan house in the cathedral 
close. Its two-storied projecting casements, entirely 



878 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

filled with the diminutive glass panes of the period, 
is said, by its proud possessors, to be the only house 
of similar design in perfect preservation in Eng- 
land. The house is now a photograph-shop ; and 
its enlightened owner delights in showing an upper 
chamber, panelled to the ceilings with rare oak 
carvings, above which, in the frieze, are most of the 
famous arms of the English past and present peer- 
age ; for this upper chamber was once the famous 
Exeter club-room, and has resounded to the Avit 
of Sidney, to the gayety. of Raleigh, and to the 
grave eloquence of Drake. The smallness of the 
chamber, its rich yet severe finish, and its sugges- 
tion of cosiness and comfort were better than 
pages of history to picture the intimacy and the 
jollity of those bygone days, when the great and 
famous were not scattered about in large cities nor 
lost in giant club-houses, but met above an ale- 
house to plan their brave schemes of adventure and 
to laugh and sing as the cup went round. 

Exeter is so rich in the consciousness of its dra- 
matic and romantic career, that the fact of its 
being a cathedral city at all appears to be merely 
a matter of detail. It can, indeed, affoi^ to regard 
as secondary in importance that which in other 



TO EXETER. 379 

cathedral towns is the sole reason of their exist- 
ence ; yet Exeter Cathedral is such a priceless 
piece of splendor, such a truly royal ecclesiastical 
jewel, that it might well serve as the unique and 
solitary glory of a city's boastful pride. 

A very obvious part of the charm of Exeter 
Cathedral lies in the fact that it has to be sought 
for. It is so well and dexterously concealed from 
view, as one passes along High Street, that one 
might be some days in town without so much as 
suspecting that one of the finest cathedrals in 
England was a near neighbor. It* was almost by 
chance, I remember, that as we turned into a long 
quaint alley-way filled up with little low shops, we 
caught a glimpse of a green plot of grass and some 
trees in the distance. Our guiding instinct divined 
these to be the cathedral close. The crooked 
alley-way, with its jumble of lurking recesses, gay 
shops, and overshadowing projections, made the 
wide, airily open close, with its beautiful assem- 
blage of old houses and the grand cathedral, set 
like some Eastern potentate in the midst of his 
silent court, doubly effective and impressive. 
There is a wonderfully appealing and persistent 
charm in such Old-World contrasts ; the beautiful is 



380 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

rendered doubly attractive by the innocent deceits 
and the various devices which time and happy ac- 
cident together have arranged as a part of the set- 
ting of the scene. One comes to the point, at the 
last, of finding an alluring coquetry in every crooked 
alley-way and dusky opening. In Exeter this -spe- 
cies of what might be termed flirting with chance 
may be carried on to a most unlimited extent ; for 
the city abounds in wanton little streets, in mys- 
terious turnings and romantic alley-ways, that end 
by leading one into a maze of adventure. But the 
king of surpris(5s holds his court in the cathedral 
close. No street was ever made up of such an 
innocent collection of projecting casements and 
unsuspicious-looking windows as the one that leads 
to the feet of the grand towers of the cathedral. 
Walking forward towards these towers which flank 
the cathedral like two colossal sentinels, gradually, 
and as if designed with the utmost skill and art so 
as to insure this slow first view, the path along the 
greensward leads one gently to the grand facade, 
and there you take your first full view of the 
glorious front. There are first impressions and 
first impressions, as there are cathedrals and cathe- 
drals ; there are impressions that are doomed to 



TO EXETER. 381 

fall into the shadowy background of disillusion, as 
there are cathedrals which, like many another 
strong and beautiful experience, gather in volume 
of effect as the after-knowledge of their greatness 
deepens. But before some of the great and glorious 
triumphs of art, the first and the last view of their 
beauty remains the same ; their all-conquering love- 
liness brings an overmastering ecstasy of delight. 
A certain strong and vivid current of emotion is 
sure, under the right conditions, to accompany 
such a moment. For art and music have this in 
common, that their most triumphant harmonies 
produce a like physical effect ; the breath comes 
swifter, the eyes unconsciously moisten, and the 
throat is seized upon by that delightful emotional 
clutch which paralyzes speech and action. Tt was 
such an effect as this that Exeter produced on me. 
It was the first and only English cathedral I had 
seen that brought with it an overwhelming feeling 
of rapture. The delight and joy in its beauty 
marked the moment as an epoch in pleasural)le 
experience. It was a moment to be classed with 
the San Sisto, with the Venus di Milo, and with 
Schubert's Unfinished Symphony moments. 

To analyze the beauties of Exeter is only to add 



382 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

another note to one's joy in them, their quality and 
rarity being of such an order as to warrant one's 
cooler admiration. The front is as unique in design 
as it is architecturally beautiful. There is that 
rarest of features in English cathedmls, — an elabo- 
rately sculptured screen, thoroughly honest in con- 
struction. In originality of conception this front 
is perhaps unrivalled, at least on English soil ; 
there are three receding stories, so admirably pro- 
portioned as to produce a beautiful effect in per- 
spective. The glory of the great west window is 
further enhanced by the graduated arcades >^which 
have the appearance of receding behind it. Above 
the west window rises a second and smaller tri- 
angular window in the gabled roof. Thus the tri- 
angular motif is sustained throughout, from the 
three low doorways in the screen up to the far- 
distant roof. This complete and harmonious front 
is nobly enriched by the splendid note of contrast 
in the two transeptal Norman towers, whose mas- 
sive structural elegance and elaborateness of detail 
lend an extraordinary breadth and solidity to the 
edifice. 

The grandeur which distinguishes the exterior 
is only a fitting preparation for the solemnity and 



"-".-.—ippj^iipr ,||||||||,| 1)11)1)111 nMiiiiiniihJ S(i|| 




^ 



TO EXETER. 383 

splendor of the interior. Passing; beneath the 
thickly massed sculptures of the low portals, the 
effect of the vastness of the nave is striking in its 
immensity. Curiously enough, in this instance, 
this effect of immensity is not due to an un- 
broken stretch of nave-aisles or to a lengthy 
procession of pier-arches, but to the magnificent 
sweep of the unencumbered vaulting in the roof. 
An organ screen intercepts the line of vision at the 
entrance to the choir. This, however, is the sole 
obstruction which the eye encounters. Above, the 
great roof, with its unbroken three hundred feet 
of interlacing lines, rises like some mighty forest, 
its airy loftiness giving to the entire interior 
a certain open-air atmosphere of breadth and 
vastness. 

For once, I fear, our sense of duty slumbered. 
Architecturally, we may be said to have been dere- 
lict in assiduous devotion to the inexhaustible 
beauties of this wonderful cathedral. The zest 
which had characterized our earlier attacks on 
the architectural peculiarities of Winchester or 
Wells had given way, before the enrapturing per- 
fections of this interior, to the lethargy of a purely 
abstract and aesthetic enjoyment. We read from 



384 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

the pages of Murray, and we heard from the lips 
of the verger, that the geometric traceries in the 
windows were of the very rarest order of perfection, 
that the windows were themselves extraordinarily 
large and pure in design, that the roof was per- 
haps excelled by no other in its lightness and grace 
or in the beauty of its slender vaulting shafts and 
in their delicately carved bosses, that these bosses 
in their variety and carving were marvels of sculp- 
ture, also that the transformation of the interior 
from the Norman to the elaborate Geometric was a 
triumph of completeness and finish surpassing the 
less thorough reconstruction of Winchester and 
Gloucester ; but we read and heard all this as in 
a dream. 

What most deeply concerned us was the desire 
to secure an uninterrupted session of contemplative 
enjoyment. We had lost our hearts to the beauty 
of the cathedral, and cared little or nothing for a 
clever dissecting of its parts. We came again and 
again ; and it was the glory of the cathedral as a 
whole — its expressive, noble character, its breadth 
and grandeur, the poetry of its dusky aisles, and 
the play of the rich shadows about its massive 
cjluinns — that charmed and enchained us. It 



TO EXETER. 385 

was one of the few English cathedrals, we said to 
each other, tliat possess the Old-World continental 
charm, the charm of perpetual entertainment, and 
whose beauty has just the right quality of richness 
and completeness to evoke an intense and personal 
sympathy ; for in all the greatest triumphs of art 
there is something supremely human. 

Our last visit was like a farewell to a friend. 
The occasion was the more sorrowful because we 
knew that it was not only our last of Exeter, but 
also that it was our last cathedral. The brief half- 
hour was imbued, therefore, with the sentiment and 
the solemnity of a final parting As if in response 
to our emotion, the organ poured forth a mournful 
tender groaning, the twilight shrouded the interior 
with a silvery pallor, and the faces on the tombs 
seemed to smile forth upon us a melancholy bene- 
diction of peace. 



25 



386 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

FAREWELL TO BALLAD. 

"W /E felt that if only in justice to Ballad, after 
his five days' imprisonment in the Exeter 
stables, we should all take a bit of an outing into 
the open country before the moment came when he 
was to take one road and we another. It was use- 
less to deny tlnlt to two of us, at least, this inevitable 
separation was about to bring sadness in its train. 
To part with a friend is bad enough ; but all human 
partings have at least this drop of honey in the 
bitter cup, — there is always mingled with the grief 
the cheering hope of a future meeting. But with 
even one's most intimate friends in the animal 
kingdom there can come no such soothing comfort. 
To bid farewell to a dog or to a beloved horse is tlie 
same as to bury him, — the world is so wide and 
men are so fickle. The opportunity is always open, 
of course, to prolong an intimacy with a four-footed 
companion by buying him. But friendship thus paid 



FARE WEIL TO BALLAD. 



387 



for usually, I find, ends as do all such mercenary 
relationships; when the period of cooling sets in 
sentiment evaporates, and the question of how much 
remains to be made out of a poor bargain is the 
ultimate result of all the fine frenzy. We had con- 
cluded, therefore, rather to part with Ballad than to 
run the risk of tiring of him. We preferred to leave 
him behind, that he, like the other features and 
incidents of our charming journey, might remain 
as an unalterable part of the delight still to come, 
— the joy we were yet to have in retrospect. 

There were two or three days spent in exploring 
the country about Exeter ; there were mornings in 
the lovely valley of the Exe, and a day and night 
given to Chagford, a wonderful little village set on 
a spur of the Dartmoor hills. These little trips gave 
us a series of delightful glimpses of Devon scenery, 

of its rusticity and its wildness, of the charm of 

its woodlands and the grandeur of its noble hill- 
country. It was as if we had undertaken, with 
premeditation, a review of Devonshire's perfections. 
Nature and the season were in conspiracy to make 
these final days the harder. We were leaving a 
land of pure gold. The grain covered the fields like 
a yellow cloud. Here and there over the meadows 



388 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

were signs Ihat already the harvest was garnered, 
amber mounds dotting the plains we passed on the 
last of our drives. The fields along the hill-sides 
were vocal with the sound of the mowers moving 
their scythes in rhythmic measure; and this mu- 
sic, which followed us into the thickly peopled 
Exeter streets, reminded us that if charming tours, 
like life itself, must come to an end, at least the 
harvest of pleasure is not over with the ending, but 
may be garnered and husbanded for future use and 
delight. 

On one particularly sunny morning a sad little 
procession wended its way to the Exeter station, — 
two, that is, out of the five composing the company, 
were sad. The other three, it is to be feared, took 
a merely perfunctory interest in the proceedings ; 
for, like mutes at a funeral, the chief reason for their 
being with us at all was their hope of making some- 
thing out of the mourners. These unfeeling three 
were the hotel porter, who had come with us that 
he might point out the man who had placed Ballad 
in his box-stall in the train ; the hostler who had 
attended to Ballad's physical wants while stopping 
at the Rougcmont ; and the usual odd man who 



FAREWELL TO BALLAD. 389 

never fails to make his appearance in England 
when anything unusual takes place, — -the man who 
never does anything in particular, but who always 
contrives to get the fee for something that some 
one else has done. With so many escorts, much 
time was lost in coming to a decision on any point ; 
and it was quite by chance that we found ourselves 
close to the freight-van in which Ballad was about 
to be whirled away from us to Chichester. A door 
was opened, a window unhinged, a considerate 
guard lifted me into the van, and behold. Ballad's 
sensitive, high-bred face was confronting me. At 
the first he received us with a start of affright, 
with quivering nostrils and high-arched ears ; but 
at the sound of our voices the trembling ceased, 
his dark eyes lanced a glance of recognition, and to 
my caressive touch he responded by an answering 
wliinny of glad greeting. It was hardly to be 
expected that the moment was as freighted with 
importance to him as it was to us. Even solitary 
confinement in a box-stall did not seem to have 
impressed him as the preliminary of our separation. 
Animals have a way of accepting the unusual, 
which in man would be termed philosophically stoi- 
cal. I, for one, had no stoicism at my command. 



390 CATHEDRAL DAYS. 

I will not say that my emotion unmanned me, — I 
did not drop a tear ; but I am quite willing to 
confess that I left the print of a very grateful and 
regretful kiss on Ballad's high white forehead. 

I have sometimes wondered during the past 
winter, as I have sat seeing in the flames of the 
open fire the vision of those six weeks of pleasure, 
whether Ballad retains a vestige of the memory of 
our happy time together; whether his adventures 
as an experienced traveller have brought him wis- 
dom, or whether, like so many another tourist, he 
carried no more home with him than he started out 
with. His gain must ever remain more or less a 
matter of speculation ; but this I know, that in re- 
turning to the world the commonplace and the prac- 
tical have been vastly less tedious because of our 
gay holiday. Life, it appears to me, may be made 
very endurable indeed if its pleasures are rightly 
managed.; and surely, those pleasures are best 
that linger longest in the memory, that continue to 
vibrate, like cathedral chimes, long after they have 
ceased to be, and that are the more complete for 
being enjoyed with the best of companions. 

THE END. 



A CHARMING BOOK OF TRAVEL. 




TWO PILGRIMS' PROGRESS FROM FAIR FLORENCE 

to the Eternal City of Rome. By Joseph and Elizabeth 
Robins Pennell. 

" It has often been said that the only way to see a country is to see it on foot. If 
one cannot see it in this way, certainly the next best thing is the bicycle or tricycle. 
It was by means of the latter that the two pilgrims who have so agreeably recorded 
their experience in this volume made their way from Florence to Rome, finding on 
the road a good many more pleasant places and fair-spoken persons than fell to the 
fortune of Biniyan's pilgrim. Nothing, in fact, could have been more delightful than 
such a journey as that recorded here, with its entire freedom, its rare opportunities of 
seeing the most secluded and remote places, and its general novelty. The charm of 
the story is greatly increased by the characteristic illustrations with which the tricyclists 
embellished their narrative- The volume is beautiluUy printed." — Fro^ti the Book- 
Buyer. 



One handsome i2mo volume, with 20 illustrations by Joseph 
Pennell. Price, $2.00. 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Publishers, 

Boston. 



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